


The Harley & The Ivy : Family Growths

by Whim_Wham



Category: Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Alien Biology, Arguing, Asperger Syndrome, Babies, Bathing/Washing, Botany, Butts, Catboys & Catgirls, Cell Phones, Chemistry, Conspiracy, Conventions, Crying, Cybernetics, Deductions, Desert, Ecology, Engagement, Evolution, F/F, F/M, Feels, Flying, Footnotes, Futanari, Genderswap, Gift Giving, Halloween, Hobbies, Holography, Homage/Fromage, Hotels, Intersex, Latin, Lesbian Sex, Literary References & Allusions, Making Out, Minions, Motorcycles, Movie Reference, News Media, Other, Panties, Party, Plans, Plants, Poetry, Pregnancy, Pubic Hair, Puns & Word Play, Rainforests, Robot Feels, Robot Kink, Robots, Scary Movies, Scents & Smells, Spooky, Supervillains, Swearing, Teenagers, Underwear Theft, Weird Biology, Wet & Messy, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2019-11-21 16:24:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 40
Words: 45,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18144581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whim_Wham/pseuds/Whim_Wham
Summary: An electrically induced hook-up in between a mammal and a floral leads eventually to an unusual extended family & circle of friends.





	1. Omnivore Cravings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sultry hothouse antics of a woman and an anthropomorphic orchid.

Prologue

Chasing her two compatriots in crime across the moonlit rooftops of Gotham’s dockside, Poison Ivy surprised herself with a loud, delighted laugh. She paused, a puzzled frown chasing the glee from her green face. The other two stopped to stare at her : Livewire's sneer slid ineffectually off of her well planted psyche, but Harley Quinn's grinning gaze ruffled something within her that she couldn't quite quantify ; and she found herself laughing again.

Quinn splayed her arms upwards, arched her back ; her costume stretched tautly over her athletic, pert breasted figure. Ivy felt an odd warmth radiate through her at the sight.

“You're finally having fun, Red!

The botanical supervillain rebuilt her aloof composure, but now it was only a facade. 

“My only desire here is to have you help me reach climax1.” She meant it purely botanically, but the other two had zero botanical schooling. Harley clutched her sides, brayed Brooklyn laughter ; leaning against the scarred wood of a rooftop door, Hollis shook her head in amused disbelief at her two oblivious confederates. Realizing the enormity of her double entendre, Poison Ivy blushed ; flustered, she didn't possess immediate control over her bodily systems. Hollis found it very interesting that as the blush travelled down Ivy's throat and over her shoulders it displaced the prim foliage of her costume with alluringly flushed, jasmine scented 'skin'. Hollis had nothing to fear about being poisoned by the toxicity of Ivy's biochemistry : she had shifted from her physical form to her electrical one to ignore the dangers of airborne pheromones and toxins. 

Harley Quinn's chemically chaotic2 physiology wasn't completely immune to the potent presence of Pamela ; her giggling fit took on a slightly drugged slur.

How clueless can you two be? Hollis snickered to herself at the thought of a literally toxic relationship. Time to launch a _tragic_ love affair! She smirked at Poison Ivy and exclaimed, “Wallflower, you're hot for clown!” 

Ivy stared dumbly back at the abrupt declaration of the blue and white lightning woman, and the rudely referenced harlequin was shocked out of her wriggling laughter. She realized just how lighthearted and happy she was in Poison Ivy's presence, and what it actually meant. Her eyes welled up as she quietly and slightly blurredly enquired, “What’s that, ‘Wire? Red _likes_ me?”

“Man, could you two be any more thick?” Hollis rolled her eyes as she addressed Poison Ivy with a pale index finger and a sardonic voice : “You've being checking her out all night, and," The finger jabbed towards the stretched out Harley, "You just paraded your steak for her hard enough to make a vegan chomp meat! Why don’t you two just shuck & suck each other’s oysters right here and now?” She flashed a toothy, evil grin.

Harley picked herself up off of filthy tarpaper, stood in close to Ivy ; could not help but run her hands through Ivy's luxuriant tresses of crimson botanical hair. She meant to sound loud and happy, but her voice actually came out small and bashful.

“You like me, _really_?”

A bemused Pamela Isley bent her neck back in pleasure at Quinzel’s gently fondling hands as she attempted to explain to both Harley and herself her feelings.

“You confuse me! Emotionally I'm happy, but physically I'm..." Her puzzlement vanished ; her expression brightened like a flower opening to the sun: "Yes! Yes, I like you! I _really_ like you!” She brought her mouth near to Harley’s, and her pheromone laced breath made Harley squirm pleasurably even as her respiration ebbed slightly. A little more foliage faded from Isley’s outfit, and she came close to kissing, probably fatally, the quivering Harley. She laughed at the simplicity of the truth and, holding Harley by her shapely shoulders, avowed, “It’s our first date, Harleen!” She withdrew her lips to a safer distance.

“And I make it a point,” ‘now’, she thought, "of allowing my dates to survive the first night out!” 

Behind them, a stern voice broke the romantic spell with, "I don't know what you're up to but it can't be any good!"

A caped and cowled woman emerged spookily from the shadows on the far side of the rooftop.

Poison Ivy and Livewire turned as one ; Harley was too stoned to anything but weave gently on her feet, a wanton little smile plastered across her face. 

Both women responded in similar yet completely different ways : Poison Ivy's cry, "Batgirl!" was depressed ; Hollis' shout, "Batbitch!" was gleeful as electricity arcing from an electrical junction arced out to snake and crackle over her body.

Batgirl frowned at Livewire: "Do you _always_ have to be so rude?”

Hollis smirked : "What’cha going to do about it, spank me?” She stuck her slender bottom out, smacked a cheek with a pale hand. “Here it is, but you're far too good a girl to be able to spank me hard enough to change _my_ ways, Bat Bimbo!"

From the other direction came another female voice every bit as happy as Hollis’ : “But(t) I bet I can, spark plug!" Arms akimbo, Supergirl levitated above the warehouse's dirty roof. 

Willis whisked her leggings down over her backside and mooned Kara. "Come and try, Superslut!"

Kara descended gracefully to the rooftop ; replied to the obscene gesture with, “You won’t be able to sit for a year!”

Batgirl averted her gaze from the nude beneath the waist Hollis.

”That’s gross even for you, Livewire!”

Willis cackled as her fists crackled as she swung at Supergirl. Kara gracefully dodged the blow, and a very dangerous attempt at disciplining the very wayward Hollis began. 

In desperation, Ivy, far removed from anything but her own vegetative self to draw upon, kissed Harley, whispered, “I’m sorry!” ; dove off the roof into the murky waters of the bay. Batgirl started to chase her but, had no other course of action but to render aid with antitoxin to the suddenly convulsing Harley Quinn. Having dosed the feebly squirming Quinn, Barbara Gordon cast a mystified look towards where Poison Ivy had escaped her. 

She wondered, ‘Ivy looked remorseful? What did we just crash?’

Behind her the crackle of electricity and the pained scream of her friend brought her back to the action.

Flat on her back, Harleen Quinzel awoke long enough to heartbreakingly wail, “Pamela!” before passing out again under the lightning flashed ozone stink of battle. 

*******************

A cruel smile cut across her emerald face, Poison Ivy sashayed into the large, plant walled and ceilinged chamber.

“Whoever you _were_ , you're now nothing but plant food!” She directed her gaze up at a figure struggling within a tangle of her carnivorous vines as fragments of red and black patterned cloth began fluttering down followed by the far less graceful plunge of an oversized croquet mallet. 

Pamela's smile turned into open mouthed shock: “Harleen?” 

The reply, panicky and a bit vine muffled, confirmed the intruder’s identity : “I don’t wanna' be fertilizer, Red! Help!”

Ivy furrowed her brow in concentration, the vines lowered from the ceiling ; their prisoner, an upside down and mostly nude Harleen Quinzel grinned that inane yet adorable grin that had first gotten under Ivy's epidermis during their three girl Gotham spree six months earlier.

“Hi ya, Red!” 

Harley waved an enthusiastic upside down wave before noticing her partial nudity ; her arms came up in a demure affectation of bust coverage. Her low-hanging fruit display surprised Poison Ivy : she felt the reawakening of those surprisingly hot stirrings that had thought she had destroyed when she had used a poisoned Harley Quinn as a desperate escape plan. However, not only had Harley survived—she could only assume that Batgirl had be in possession of antitoxin—but she was also returning to try to reignite what she had almost achieved with Pamela prior to the SuperBat blitz. In remembering the disaster, Ivy suddenly realized that she had been far angrier than usual since the sudden severing of the promising relationship, and she abruptly knew what her cure was : she needed a large infusion of lost lover, stat! She kept this need behind a frosty facade as dignity demanded that she not instantly embrace her lover, and, more importantly, she'd rather not instantly re-poison Harleen. Managing a detached manner, Pamela inquired, “Harley Quinn, what do you want?”

Harleen pouted, her arms tightening across her chest ; pink crescents of small areola and pencil eraser nipples peeked pinkly over the pale flesh of her forearms. The mammalian display aroused two responses within Pamela Isley's mind : strong physical desire mixed with confusion. She thought, What is it about this mammal that makes her different from all of the others? 

Eyes shining, Harley breathily asserted : “I want _you_ , Red!”

There was that final and seemingly unsurmountable issue : "But I almost killed you!"

"Trust me, Red : _now_ I can take _all_ of your lov'n!"

"Can you, _really_?" ; she willed the seething vine to drop its captivating cargo into her arms. "I'm going to need proof."

Ivy felt Harleen's sexual vigour through the body chemistry of the sweat, saliva and scent that carried through the delicate stoma complex of her epidermis into her biochemically super aware body ; and discovered two things : Harleen really _was_ immune to the deadly effects of Ivy's toxins ; and, she had the sweet sexy musk of Ethylene3 in her sweat. Pamela Isley found herself laughing delightedly as she hugged the confused and then also laughing Harleen Quinzel to her sexually enkindling body.

"You really are the _only_ mammal for me!"

Poison Ivy’s signs of sexual stimulation were far more interesting than just the typical dilated pupils and labial swellings of fully mammalian women. She did possess these ordinary markers, but they were far less noticeable than her unique set of aroused bodily responses. In her lover's arms, a rapt Harleen watched the exclusive sexual biology of Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley blossom. Quinzel had seen its beginnings only once before, and now she was ready to see it through.

The vegetation that clothed Pamela retreated before the spread of her comely blush to reveal a firm, busty body that was a beguilingly odd fusion of flora and fauna. The final fade of costume, at her groin, revealed Ivy’s core, a Georgia O'Keefe-esque purple, yellow and coral orchid vulva that was the single sexiest thing Harley had ever seen. Then Pamela's sexual physiology really skyrocketed.

A luminous emerald haze spread first from the genitals and then the rest of the body perfuming the air with a scent of honey. Harleen greedily breathed it in, and elatedly felt exactly what she had struggled so long to achieve : a much more measured response than the euphoric madness and near death that had been the results of her first dose of Poison Ivy's pheromones. Harley felt a lust for Poison Ivy flood through her so strong as to almost qualify as a spontaneous orgasm. She fixed her pleasure darkened eyes on Ivy’s equally dilated pupils, and kissed her. 

Pamela pulled away, a guilty look flashing across her face.

"I abandoned you!"

Harley smiled in a way new to her: gently.

“Nope, you only misplaced me; now I'm found. ”

If she had possessed lacrimal glands, Teardrops would have fallen from Pamela Isley's emerald eyes as she tenderly kissed the woman she held in her arms.

“That’s more like it, Pam!”

The prettily petite and pale Harleen Quinnzel returned the kiss, slipping a pointed tongue past Pamela's green lips as her pale hands played with breasts much larger than her own pert pair. An ecstatic little moan escaped Pamela at Harleen's oral and digital attentions ; her nipples hardened into emerald points of pleasure, and a liquid heat began to flare with insistent need at her groin.

Another unusual aspect of Pamela's botanical physiology added to the outré lovemaking : a ripple of iridescent moss flowed off of Ivy’s body ; proceeded to consume the remaining tatters of Harley’s outfit in the most outlandish, ticklish and, _sexy_ disrobing imaginable. 

Quinn giggled: “It kinda lichen tickles, Red!” She would have gone on to make a joke that it moss look pretty funny, but Ivy tongued her pleasure pouted nipples, and she had no choice but to eject wit in favour of an ecstatic gasp of pleasure. 

Suddenly feeling a little too far over the edge of rationality, a bit too giddy for her sense of floral self, Pamela, altered her immediate biochemical status, and overrode a portion of her _animal_ lust : not enough to turn her off of the ensuing sex. She required just enough self-control to let her retain her aplomb as she engaged in the physical act of love. Harleen was rocketing far too quickly down the hormonal slip-and-slide of sex to either notice or care that her lover was no longer quite as besotted with her as she had been seconds before. 

Springy grasses, pliant ferns and fragrant herbs sprouted and bloomed instantly under Harleen as Pamela laid her down upon the luxuriant, vegetative bed. 

Quinn, a pink tanga garbed nymph, lounged immodestly in her fantastic fairy glade, her hands sensually sliding down over naked breasts and flat stomach to tease little groans and Hip twitches out of her by grazing the fabric covering her vulva. She kept her lust darkened, half-lidded eyes locked on a Pamela who was having a hard time not completely surrendering to her sex drive. The earthy, slightly ethylene sweetened scent rising off of the light sheen of sweat beginning to glisten across Harleen's slowly writhing body made Pamela's orchid genitals open to reveal their moist, perfumed inner folds ; a slender green hand wandered to it, and, almost as if on its own accord, began to gently stroke the wet, heated petal it found there. Jasmine joined the other sex scent, and a rivulet of honeyed fluid trickled from her vulva and down her inner thigh as Pamela's own soft whimpers intermingled with those of Harleen's. Then, gazing into each others eyes, hands traded places ; the tempo and volume of the cries and moans increased as masturbation became mutual. Pamela found her self control ebbing as Harleen's questing fingers brushed across her bright yellow clitoris, and she trembled through the first electrifying shocks of impending orgasm even as she felt her own fingertips slid past the wet cotton of panties to slip within a surprisingly hairy mons pubis. 

Harleen cried out, ecstatically, "I'm yours, Pam!”

Pamela correctly translated the exclamation to mean 'do whatever you want to me', and was astonished in two ways : the depth of Harleen's trust awed her as did the fact that she suddenly found herself in literal virgin territory. She found the abrupt thought of serious relationship literally sobering. 'I have no idea how to handle...' Then experience and expertise redressed her problem. 

Ivy knelt down before Harley’s indecorously splayed legs, and she returned the same gentle smile with which Harleen had assured her that the relationship was recoverable.

"You're all _mine?_ "

Harleen spread eagled herself before her green lover : "Every ounce, inch and pinch!"

Pamela tested the assertion, reaching down to tweak a pert, coral nub of nipple : Harleen twitched, happily ; asked, "I wanna' know exactly what you're going to do to me, Pam! Tell me, tell me, tell me!"

“I’m going to tend to your garden, Harleen : weeding, tilling, harvesting, planting.

“What’cha mean?”

“That not only my thumbs are green!”

Ivy hooked her aforementioned thumbs under the elastic band of the pink panties ; Harley raised her tush, and Pamela whisked the moistened article of apparel off ; lofted it into the humid air, a cherry blossom that fell across an erect patch of purple, penile snapdragons.

Crouched between Harley’s splayed legs, Pamela inspected the bushy blonde thatch that obscured a pouty, almost petal free vulva.

“Well, if anyone was going to have a wild garden...!”

Swishing the vine within her mouth that acted as her tongue, Pamela concentrated upon producing a saliva just right for epilation. Harley was about to ask for details, when Pamela erased the question from her mind with a sloppily stirring swipe of green tongue across her crotch. Murmuring pleasurably, Harleen welcomed the lap with an upward thrust of her hips, a portion of her brain--a minor portion--noting that the organ contacting her amorous skin was now oddly raspier than it had been before. Then, as its cat's tongue attentions lifted, a larger part of her was aware of something else : her nether regions were a little too...heated ; but, again before she could respond, a second liberally wet dash of soft tongue both cooled and further exited her. A horny and mystified Harleen raised her head from her ferny bed in time to witness Pamela hawking a large blonde hairball into the open maw of a vine that, as she watched, retracted back into the shadows as quickly as it had snaked to Pamela's side. Pamela responded to the woman's confusion with an enigmatic joke.

“If you can’t see the flowers and veggies for the weeds, it’s not a proper garden!” 

“Huh?” Pamela pointed down to the base of Harleen's torso, and Harleen suddenly understood as she saw and then felt her now completely smooth, hairless mons veneris.

She spoke with an odd mix of turned-on and weirded-out : “You shaved me with your _mouth_?” 

“I don’t like hair in my food!” Ivy darted her slick, emerald tongue into the bare, drenched satin of Harley’s vulva ; began to feast.

“You taste like red meat!”

“I thought, _Ohhh!_ , you were a, _Ahhh!_ , a veget….”

Ivy smiled : “I’m not big on cannibalism, Harl.” The smile widened in to a grin: “I only eat animals.” She proved this interjection by returning to her metaphorical consumption of Harleen Quinzel's pudendum. 

Harley entwined her fingers in Ivy’s mane of red hair, and held on as her lover continued her oral explorations of her amorous anatomy.

She gasped, "But how can meat suddenly show up with all of the gardening sex talk?"

Her face slick with Harleen's intoxicating juices--'What exactly were the contents of that concoction she was bathed in, _anyway_ \--Pamela parked her face inches from her lover's ; gravely intoned, "Chickens, cows and sheep are practically vegetables..."

Harleen put a mock twist in her smile : "Are you calling _moi_ a turnip?"

"That tastes like lamb!"

She punctuated the observation with a wriggling tongue tip tentacle against Harleen's stiff little pearl of a clitoris.

Harleen Quinzel's response was a multiple body quaking series of laughter suffused orgasms. 

Ivy cradled Quinn as she slowly swam back to the world of conscious thought from the valhalla of gibbering pleasures. Mostly returned, Harley quirked a sweaty grin up at her lover.

“I didn’t know they made orgasms that strong!”

“Apparently, for you, _I_ can.”

“ 'Ray!” Harley wiped her sweaty brow. “Cuddle?”

“Cuddle.” Ivy snuggled her pooped paramour. 

Ivy stroked Harleen's damp hair. “So, how is it that you can do _that_ with me?"

Harley traced the curves of a verdant earlobe with a finger. “Oh, once I knew I wanted you, Pam, I stole a batch of your _products_ from Arkham and started using them to build an immunity to your... fatal charms!"

Pamela Isley, biochemist, kissed her foolish daredevil.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that plan was?”

Harley knew exactly how dangerous it had been. She had nearly died twice ; but, in the arms of her objective, she also knew that the risks had been nothing against the gains. She slipped her sharp little pink tongue around the delicate curl of a green earlobe and accepted the pleased shiver as proof that she had stayed the correct course. 

She smiled a wacky banana : “Now d' ya have any idea how much I _want_ you, lover?”

“I do!” Ivy kissed her with a duration and single-mindedness that proved that she now knew exactly how much Quinn valued her. Inside the intricate enigma of her animal vegetable anatomy, Pamela unshackled her animal urge ; she felt it begin to bud within her as she lay in Harleen's lazily loving embrace. 

****

A half hour later, a renewed Harley raised what had been on her mind ever since Poison Ivy had phrased it : “So, I’ve been weeded and harvested, Red ; what’s with the planting?”

Ivy cocked a grin ; grew a cock, her clitoris sprouted, thickened ; developed a urethra. 

Harley’s eye widened, and she fell melodramatically backwards, limbs spread-eagled: “Teak me!”

Ivy’s grin grew with the shaft until it was a thirteen inch monster of scary five inch girth.

“Like this?”

Harley quickly crossed her legs. “No way! I thought teak trees were wee!”

“No." Pamela wiggled her hips ; the mighty yellow, red traceried phallus swayed, timber in the wind. "They're huge _hard_ woods!”

Harley reached up, touched the smooth, woody glans ; it twitched, Ivy shuddered.

“Way too much tree!” How about shrinking it down and giving me some suger, maple?”

Ivy snorted at the pun. She winkled her nose, and the length and girth reduced down to a still very impressive eight by three.

“Now that’s wood I can work!” Harleen uncrossed, knelt before Ivy ; wrapped a hand around the base of the shaft and slowly began to stroke upwards.

A rapt expression of concentration furrowing her brow, Harleen joked, "I haven't climbed a tree in a long time : how'm I doin'?"

Pamela wanted to reply wittily, but all she could manage was a gasped, "Fi-AHH!-ne!"

A clear pearl of fluid welled up at the tip top just as Harleen's hand crested over the glans. 

A hummingbird drinking nectar, Harley lapped at the liquid ; and a glistening strand of pre come bridged the gap in between her tongue and the saliva and come slicked head of Pamela's glans penis cum glans clitoridis. Her face registered happy surprise.

“You taste like maple syrup?”

Gently playing with herself, an inflamed Ivy groaned : “I’m a...biochemist with, ohhh!, botanical superpowers ; I can taste like whatever I, or you, want...”

Harleen interrupted her, taking the entire head into her mouth, swirling her tongue around its rigid heat before lengthening her appreciations to the rest of the member and its feminine root flower. The flavour of the fluid trickling into her mouth swung through a complimentary series of flavours: chocolate, coffee, cinnamon, nutmeg. During this demonstration of her control over her biochemistry, Pamela's knees weakened and she sank sweating, and gasping onto her back, where with a screaming, back arching thrust, she dual climaxed : one animal with impressive spurts of aromatic fluid ; the other floral with multiple bursts of iridescent pollen sprays from tiny red flowers that burst into glorious orgasmic bloom across her body. 

Harley managed to contain the first two penile spurts, but the rest of the bio-luminous golden fluid spurted freely in spasmodic time to Ivy’s ecstatic cries of release. Honey and pollen bespattered, Harleen slid slickly up her lover’s body to plant a powdery kiss upon her panting, open mouth. 

"That was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen!" She sniffled, wrapped her arms around Pamela and wept happily : "You're mine, forever and ever?"

"And ever!" She soothed down Harleen's damp and dusty blonde hair. She considered her crotch, noting that the swelling hadn't yet reseeded. Quinn also took note ; took hold, brushing the tip against the outer fold of her vulva. She directed a half-joking quip at Pamela.

“I’m not going to pop out a baby bouncing bonsai in nine months, am I?”

“Only if the flower can baby bump the bee!"

"Then I'll give this thing a big, 'stAy-MEN' ! " 

Ivy bucked her hips; only her glans penetrating vulva ; Harley provided the rest of the penetration, slowly, noisily, sweatily inching down on eight inches of thick, curved shaft. As soon as she bottomed out, her flushed vulva grazed Ivy’s female genitals and both participants orgasmed as one. Harley cried out, “I’m a tree hugger! ” ; began to lustily ride her lover carousel-pole-cowgirl style until, splattered by their commingled sexual ejecta, sweat, and saliva, the couple collapsed, a gasping, groaning happy knot of sweaty lovers . 

Her left hand lazily roaming Ivy's sweat slick flank, Harleen's right scribbled haiku in the emissions of love:

Field of flowers

After a summer rain storm

Steaming in the sun

Harleen Quinzel snuggled down against Pamela, whispered her ribald poetry in her ear ; Pamela, lolling upon the bed of vegetation, climax blossoms shucking off her sweaty body in a lovely drift of petals; her liquid slicked phallus slowly shrinking back into its original clitoral nubbin at the vertex of her perfumed, orchid vulva, smiled languidly.

"Tell me more, my horny little poetess!" 

Harley furrowed her brow, looked for inspiration ; found it on her lover. She plucked a petal still attached to Pamela ; the plucked twitched, erotically.

"She loves me!" Pluck. Twitch. "She loves me not." Pluck. Twitch! "She loves me!" Pluck. Twitch!! "She loves me not. Pluck. Twitch!!! She arrived at the final one and, unhappy with the results, adhered a fallen petal to Ivy's side with a dollop of ejaculate ; triumphantly snatched it away.

"She loves me!"

To prove the point, Ivy wrapped her arms about her ; dragged her down for a lazy, drawn out smooch.

Pamela broke the kiss, murmured ; "The haiku was good, but I really _felt_ that other one!"

**************

1 Climax, in Ivy's context, refers to the ecological achievement of equilibrium in her particular vegetable environment.

2 A previous dysfunctional boyfriend (!) had dipped Harley in a variant of his very own villainous origin-bath.

3 Ethylene is both an industrial gas and a plant pheromone! This makes it perfect for the narrative as it was obviously included in Harley Quinn's chemical origin bath.


	2. Pitcher Perfect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harleen begins to plunge Pam and her plant-y place.

  
Chapter 2: Flowers, Pitchers, Fish & Fun  
Summary:

Harleen and Pamela further explore each other.

  
  


A colourful riot of vines and flowers canopied the gigantic bed, looped and festooned the living wood of the four corner posts ; wove together to make floral damask bedclothes. It was a literal flowerbed within a bubble of florae that isolated the lovers entwined upon it from the rest of the world. There were many perfumes and fragrances but the ones that dominated were the jasmine and honeysuckle sex scent of Pamela Isley and jungly, earthy aroma of Harleen Quinzel that, to Pamela alone, was usually the finest and sexiest perfume of all. Pamela found herself wrinkling her nose in a slight display of disapproval.

Pamela Isley possessed sweat glands, but they were part of her vestigial unalloyed animal past ; and her metabolism did not run hot enough to require perspiration. However, to her delight, sweat was wonderful for sex : the things it did to accentuate the pleasures of bodily contact, the extra sex pheromones it transmitted ; the loveliness of a glistening lover. She increased her sweat and aroma output to offset her increasingly stinky lover. 

Pamela rubbed her sweat slick body up and along Harleen’s heated, wet flesh. Groaning, she teased a stiff, emerald nipples into and across the silken folds of Harleen's vulva ; Harleen slithered against her, a babble of jokey love spurting from from her lips.

"You're really _teat_ me right! Gonna'...give me a...BIG!... _bust!_!" An orgasm temporarily stopped the punning.

The redhead slid her tongue over the pulse of her lover’s pale throat as she lowered her groin against the blonde’s upper thigh, began to slowly, pleasurably, and liquidly rub her flowery core against smooth, heated creamy flesh. 

Harleen giggled, wriggled ; shook Pamela loose from her leggy perch to slide wetly down thigh to bump her well-petaled vulva against Harleen's pink, skinny pout of a puss. She kissed Pam’s surprised face, declared, “This’ll be much more fun, Pam!” 

To prove her point, Harleen twitched her hips, panted as her vulva graze heatedly across Pamela’s flowery folds ; Pamela returned the tentative twitch with a thrust and a gasp of her own. Awkward fumbling quickly resolved into the gasping, sweaty synchronization of two elements combined into a compound of perfect sexual chemistry. Twirling her taut bottom, Harleen brushed the nub of her clitoris against the yellow and red veins of her lover’s orchidaceous vulva ; Pamela’s full body orgasm doused the bed and Harleen in honeyed come, aromatic climax blossoms and pixie dust pollen.

The orgasmic display pushed Harley over the edge, and, crying out, she added her own gush of fluid to the mess of sexual ejecta. Spread eagled, glistening crotch twitching in orgasmic aftershocks, a blossomy, powdery and very wet Harleen Quinn blushed.

"Tell me I didn't just pee all over you!”

Pamela absorbed the liquid splashed across her torso, bit her lower lip in thought ; smiled reassuringly at her embarrassed redhead : "It's too distilled to be urine. You've...watered your favourite plant, and now she has a surprise for you!" A lovely epidermal ramble of miniature flowering vines sprouted black red and white flowers across Pamela's abdomen. Pamela delicately removed a short length of curling vegetation, and placed it in the damp cowlick in-between Harleen’s blonde bunches where It instantly began to grow and flower through moist hair. 

“It’s a tee-hee-ara!” Harleen quipped, giggling at the scalp tickling garland.

Pamela smooched Harleen's damp forehead, said : “They’re a new type of _Clerodendron thomsoniae_ ; I’m calling them _Harley Hearts_.”

Harleen’s eyes widened, became misty.

“You made a new flower just for me?” Her lower lip began to tremble. 

Pamela found herself suddenly cuddling a bawling blonde. She smiled into dewy blue eyes, kissed the tip of the pert and slightly runny nose parked in between them. She teased a gently writhing flowered tendril from the left splay of Harley’s bunches. 

“A rare blossom for my rarer flower.” 

She pecked a hummingbird kiss on the vine, returned it to its new home ; wrinkled her nose as she swept Harleen off her feet and proceeded to the exit of the moonlight frosted bedroom bower. A portion of the greenery untangled an opening before Pamela as she carried her lover into the warm summer night. Behind them, the plants tangled and flowed back over the skeletal steelwork of a cylindrical fuel storage tank bearing the corroded label, ‘Gotham Victory Tank Farm’. It was just one of many mouldering, plant bedecked structures, the steel frameworks of which gleamed skeletally under the light of a full moon. 

Harleen, calmed by cradling, sniffled : “I’m a hot mess, Pam : sorry!”

Pamela kissed the top of Harl’s garlanded head ; gave her body a warm squeeze.

“You’re also a stinky mess, Harl ; I’ve got to do something about that!”

Harley was all eyes.

“What do...?”

“This!” Pam pitched her into water. Harley surfaced, sputtering ; tried to glare at Pam, failed at the sight of the pool : She treaded water in the middle of a swimming pool sized green and purple veined pitcher plant. 

Uncannily lit by watery bioluminescent light, Harleen Quinn was again reminded of the oddness of her lover. 

“Ummm, am I swimming in digestive juices?”

Pamela laughed : “It’s a _Nepenthes ampullaria_ , silly : they aren’t carnivorous.” She dove in ; came up gracefully next to the paddling Harleen.

“It’s our tub. Do you Like it?”

“Now that I know it ain’t gonna’ eat me, Seymour1, it’s fantastic, but…” She navigated a full dog paddle circuit of the pond’s perimeter. “…how clean can we get with just water?”

“That’s what my Floribus Pisces are for!” She pointed down into the purple and green depths of the vegetative bowl, and Harleen could make out an approaching swarm of objects that resolved quickly into a school of beautiful fusions of flowers and Siamese fighting fish. Harleen found herself surrounded by the tingly soft nibbles of a gentle cleaning frenzy. There was a second tingly sensation underlying the increasingly exciting nibbling of the 'fish' : she felt it briefly at her anus and then, not unpleasantly, it tingled through her abdomen. 

“What about hair? I don’t want to hurt my new flowers!”

“They'll be fine : the only live thing my fish feed on is e-coli.”

Harleen held her breath, slipped beneath the blood temperature water ; felt the school working at the seashells of her ears and swimming through the blonde seaweed of her hair. 

She broke surface clean and horny, flowers intact. 

“Oh my God, Pam, your idea of getting clean is almost as good as getting dirty!”

Pamela, surrounded by her own attendant swarm of aquatic blossoms, laughed : “It’s just a heterotrophic cleanse, Harl ; how sexy could that be?”

Biting her lower lip as her own submarine squadron gently massaged in between her toes, Harleen moaned, “Relax into it, Pam; you’ll be…” A flock of floribus grazed on her backside, some of them daintily dining on, and slightly into, her puckered anus ; her little cry of surprised delight eloquently made her point.

A dubious look on her face, Pamela closed her eyes ; relaxed, floating onto her back. 

“I don’t feel any diff… _OH!_ ” Her eyes flew open as her bioengineered luffa-patrol gave her own fundament their special cleansing treatment.

“How did I miss just how filthy these things are, Harl?”

The addressed paddled over, copped a feel of Ivy ; grinned into her pleasure darkened eyes.

“The old you was way too serious to notice, Pam.”

“I was too angry to notice a lot of things, Harl!”

She went vertical, embraced Harleen ; whispered in her ear.

“Now that we're clean, would you like to come up to my room?”

Harleen looked confused : “I’ve already been there, haven’t I?”

Pamela splashed her playfully. “That’s your own little hideaway. I'm talking _our_ Master Bedroom! 

“Ohhhh!” That was partly Harleen’s comprehension, partly her reaction to the continuing ministrations of the floral fish ; and partly her excitement at thinking about what was going to occur within this, as of yet unseen, bedchamber. 

She followed Pamela’s delectable, wet red hair plastered bottom up the sticky, cilia-studded side of the pitcher plant ; padded through the moon lit wreckage of the oil depot towards a tower in the middle of the facility. As they approached, twin enormous vertical Venus flytrap doors muscled open to reveal an interior that was part greenhouse and part cathedral.

Harleen walked into the lofty space, twirled about laughing gleefully. 

Pamela sashayed her soaked body over to a luxuriant tapestry of mosses, toweled herself dry. 

Harleen buzzed beezily about the chamber. “I like the art! It reminds me of your flower!”

There were a series of paintings all by the same hand of various labial closeups of an assortment of blooms. in the centre of the room, hanging from a vine assemblage over the bed was a striking thirty six inch tall painting of the vibrant red, white and yellow flowery folds of, according to the title plate in the frame, a Red Canna.

"Wow, this one's _really_ a turn on! Over the bed's a great place for it!"

“You really are a dirty girl!”

Harleen crossed the room to Pamela, dried herself with the moss ; kissed Pamela.

“Tell me they don’t all look like…” She reached down, caressed Pamela’s orchid bud. 

“O’Keefe only saw flowers, but now, thanks to you, all I’ll ever see are vaginas! Thanks heaps!” She didn’t sound all that put out, especially with Harleen’s fondling. 

“It’s the duty of all us dirty girls to properly edu-ma-cate our unfun sisters!” Harleen kissed Pamela’s emerald neck ; teased pale fingers into her moist vulvar folds.

Pamela wriggled free, took Harley by the hand slick with her lubricant ; led her to the central circular bed that looked like the best tended golf green minus the cup. Pamela laid Harleen down upon this raised grassy dais ; bussed her fondly and generously, pressing the length of naked body against Harleen’s.

“Now I don’t know about you, but I’m going to need to sleep soon.”

At the mention of sleep, Harleen felt her own near exhaustion that had been disguised under the manic energy of sexual chemistry. She yawned, hugely : "I just wanna' fall asleep in the arms of my ladylove!"

Pamela ran a hand gently through Harleen's clean and newly dual re-bunched hair until she did just as she promised ; then Pamela joined her in sleep. Harleen snored chainsaws. Pamela mumbled Latin taxonomy.

**************

1 At least one oblique reference to _Little Shop of Horrors_ is necessary!

  



	3. The Fundament of Relationship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sex, even great sex, is not the best foundation for a lasting relationship. Children on the other hand....

  


As the blossoms fell away from her trembling, sweaty body, Pamela pantingly addressed the top of the twin blonde bunched head that still nestled bee like at her floral crotch : “Ahh, we should, ohh, do something besides each other, don’t you think?” 

Harleen raised a come coated face up from Pamela’s perfumed, very wet purple, pink and yellow vulva.

“Yeah, when we’re old, dried up husks in…” She threw both hands up, fingers splayed. “In ten years, or so! Until then….” She latched her lips around Pamela’s purple and pink labia ; gave its heated, slick petals a long, adoring working over with her tongue. Pamela tangled fingers through Harleen's hair as she hung on as her body began to crest towards orgasm. Harleen's attentions shifted towards a specific purpose. Harleen's pheromonal scent shifted towards her new goal as her lips, tongue and sexual chemistry united to goad Pamela's yellow and red traceried clitoral nub.

Harleen achieved her goal. Pamela's clitoris swelled, grew into thick Joshua tree phallus. Harleen admired the growth with a, "I grow good bone-sai!" before fellating it with noisy abandon ; and then slipping its wide , wet girth into the heated and slippery musculature of her athletic vagina. Harleen rocketed towards what Pamela had been building to, and both women orgasmed explosively in perfectly fused sexual union. 

In what Pamela knew was only the eye of the orgasm storm if she didn't act, she cleared her endorphin stoned brain ; revisited the position she had earlier raised. She gently took Quinn’s head between her green hands, and stared into her blue eyes.

“We’re doing something else for a while, Harl! Anything but sex! Understand?”

A come bespattered Harleen Quinn moued back at her.

“Why?”

“A couple of reasons : psychological and biological.” She reached up caressed Harleen’s face ; she felt something squirmy tease loose, not unpleasantly, from her forehead. Pamela held a tiny squirming little vine in front of Harleen’s blue eyes.

“I’m colonizing you ; I suspect the opposite is also true.”

“So? All couples equalize their body chemistries through shared fluids.”

Pamela raised a red lichened eyebrow : “Yes, over years and decades of contact! This is our first month, and we need to slow things down before you become more floral than faunal ; and I end up more mammal than I want.” 

Harleen’s pout lessened.”And the psychological?”

“We need to put more than a tap root down if our relationship is going to last : we need to sink a bigger root network of shared interests that will take what we have beyond the merely physical.”

Harleen tweaked Pamela’s still pleasure pouted nipples, eliciting a horny sigh from her verdant significant other. 

“We have a really _hot_ mere, Pam!” She replaced her fingers with her tongue ; Pam’s receptive sigh nudged up the scale to a moan.

“There’s more than enough empiric data to prove that, Ahhh!,” She grew out her clitoral shaft to oak girth and spruce length ; and Harleen, receptively presenting her rump, gasped in surprise as nine by five thick inches of Pamela teased inside her other proffered up, albeit unintentionally, orifice. She shot a suspicious look over her shoulder at an elaborately innocent looking Pamela grasping her by the hips.

“I didn’t say that you could play my back nine, Red! That’s a two stroke penalty!” She pulled away from the questing tip of Pamela’s phallus. 

Pamela shrugged, extended the golf analogy, her club retreating back into her cup : “Guess I’ll have to clean my woods before I play the backend of your course.”

****

In the blood temperature waters of the detritivorous pitcher plant pool, a cleansing fish-blossom titillated Harleen confronted her bathing partner.

“You did that to interrupt the sex!”

Pamela solemnly nodded.

“I want to find out what else we excel at together.”

Harleen Quinzel, sometimes known as Harley Quinn, expelled air in a huff of exasperation.

“You insist, Red?”

Being nibbled upon excitingly by her marine buds, Pamela barely managed to maintain a serious face . 

“You and I are _going_ to bond beyond sex!”

“I can hardly wait.” She sounded as if she could wait for a very long time.

****

Within the wreckage of the largest cylindrical storage tank, Pamela's arboretum ringed a fantastical boreal-rainforest jumble-jungle of trees about a central glade in which the two women, one patently nude, the other only seemingly clothed, gardened.

Harleen's nudity had begun purely as psychological warfare. She would break her lover’s resolve to replace sex with other endeavours with the power of her hot little bod.However, within a week two things had happened : Harleen had discovered it was far easier, and much more fun, for her to pitcher & flower-fish herself clean than wash clothes ; and gardening, at least of the highly exotic Poison Ivy variant, was fascinating enough to displace her nymphomaniacal urges. There was another force, an ancient force, in play ; she was not yet aware of it. She would be soon enough : the relationship would be stronger for it. 

Down on her hands and knees in the rich loam, a dirt streaked and happily humming Harleen Quinzel prepared a bed for her first official botanical creation. Pamela had trouble focussing on her own task as she had a very distracting view of Harleen’s pale, and becomingly besmirched butt twitching in the air as its owner sang a snatch of song as she planted her creation.

Let dreamers dream

What worlds they please

Those Edens can't be found.

The sweetest flowers,

The fairest trees

Are grown in solid ground.1

Pamela stretched forward on all fours, planted a kiss on Harley’s right buttock ; savoured the tang of her sweat and her naturally earthy odour. The pecked cheek twitched much more invitingly than the voice which emanated from the other end of the nude woman.

“Not now, Pam, I’ve gotta’ focus on getting the soil just right for Triffy.” 

Pamela grinned, ran fingertips lightly across the pert peekaboo of privates. The flesh reacted properly, becoming heated and pouty, but the mind behind it--in front of it--was stubbornly focussed. Pamela, put out, retreated to her own plot.

She sat on a rump that was technically as nude as Harleen’s, if one discounted the viny panties that were, after all, just as epidermal as the rest of her ; gave a rueful sigh. 

“You're the the one who wanted to me to delve into _other_ parts of your life!”

Harleen reached for the terracotta pot next to her, and transferred its contents into her neatly prepared cavity of soil laced with a bright assortment of powders and fluids. Her creation wriggled babyishly within its new flower bed. She cooed to the plant as she troweled soil in about its roots ; soothed it into its new home. 

Wrangling a parasitic Woe vine2 away from a fireworks display of mixed Spider Chrysanthemum and Protea Pinwheel blossoms3 Pamela complained, “I didn't mean for _that_ delving to stop your delving me for this long!"

Harleen bent down, planted a gentle kiss on her creation ; her bottom wriggling at a visibly frustrated Pamela. 

Harleen turned her other end to Pamela : “I know, but now that we're parents there is much more to life than just sex."

"Now that we're _what_?"

Harleen stroked a tiny green and blonde flecked leaf of her creation : "Triffy is _our_ little chimera baby!" 

Pamela considered her girlfriend with a neutral expression.

"You grafted us together into one of my plants?"

The blonde suddenly looked uncertain : "Is that okay, Pam?"

Pamela reworked her internal eye structure so that tears welled in the redhead's eyes, and crying happily, she threw herself into her woman's arms.

****

Wheeling a wheelbarrow of carefully partitioned soils of various colours and qualities, Dr. Pamela lillian Isley walked into the eclectic ecology of her arboretum ; stopped, poleaxed. The wide Os of her mouth and eyes were quickly replaced by a smirk and a twinkle. She looked over her shoulder, and matter of factly said, “Honey, Triffy’s monoecious.” 

“She’s wha…?” Harleen dropped her bag of gardening gear, her favourite trowel thunking blade downward inches from her bare left big toe. 

“ _Actively_ self pollinating. Geitonogamous, to be _exact_. ”

They both watched the mesmerizing mass motion of obviously masculine flowers working away at obviously female blossoms on a central stalk that was much larger than the weekend old Triffy had any right to be. Tendrils extended from the main maypole body to wend the botanical orgy throughout the boughs and limbs of the trees bordering the central glade. Pulses of pollen sprayed down from twitching flowers, and several tiny copies of the main plant dotted the flower beds surrounding the parent plant. 

Harleen summed up her reaction to the huge literal deflowering with an uneasy giggling, “Fuck, Pam, I’ve made a Spanish Fly Trap!”

Pamela copped a squeeze of nude Harleen rump, wryly observed, “Even your gardening is _dirty_ , naughty girl!” 

Harleen was too anxious to respond properly or improperly to the fondle.

“You’re not mad that I’ve wrecked your tree garden?”

Pam pecked her Harl upon her nose.

“You've turned it into a _hot_ house!” She walked up to the quivering stem, planted both hands against its succulent surface ; injected it with tendrils of her vegetative essence.

Harleen watched with eyes that became dewy with concern. 

“You’re not going to harm Triffy, are you, Pam?”

“Our root child? Of course not, silly! I’m just going to shift ninety nine percent of Triffy's sex drive from reproductive drive to recreational diversion.”

Harleen nodded, relieved : “So we won’t soon be up to our necks in…”

Pamela interrupted with taxonomic Latin : “Prudentia carnis vineam.”

“What’s that mean?”

Pamela smirked : “Fucking vines.”

*****************

1Voltaire. _Candide_. 

2U.S. Dept. Agricultures nickname for Cassytha vine. (Wikipedia)

3www.flowersacrossmelbourne.com.au/uncategorized/40-of-the-worlds-weirdest-flowers/


	4. Piggies & Prattle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Triffy descriptors & spiffy confabulators!

  


Garlanded in her eponymous flowering vine, Harleen Isley puttered about the glade the arboretum. At the centre of the garden, Triffy’s dimorphic flowers hung in idle loops around a swaying central stalk topped by a large oval green, black and yellow flower. 

Harleen chuckled : “The only time you’re not horny is when you’re hungry : you really are our non-binary little sher-sher!" 

She Reached into the bag by her dirt streaked feet, tossed a squirming, squealing Guinea pig in a high arc towards Triffy. Pamela wasn't sure how the plant detected food, but however Triffy did it, sher did it very well : the flower snapped the rodent out of the air with a wet crunch. Fed, the stalk calmed into its contented gentle wavering as sher’s tongue vine lazily worked at bits of meat caught between oral thorns. 

Harleen padded over, patted the stalk ; Triffy rubbed sher two emotive vines, positioned just below her flower, together to produce the grating purr that the parents had come to recognize as monster plant happiness.

An amused dryad, Pamela leaned against the mossy bark of a bonsai Dawn Redwood as her partner mothered their Faural1 progeny. 

“Triffy certainly is our child : I recognize my good looks and your…”

Harleen interrupted her spouse's observations with, “Brains?” 

Pam dryly answered : “Sex drive, crotch-brain.”

Harleen adopted an arms raised above her head ballerina pose.

“Are you suggest’n that I…”

She Fondled her head with both hands, and sang in a thick Southern Belle accent.

“…abstain from usin' m'ah brain”

She slinkily slid her hands down her body to ring her gyrating groin.

“ To think with m'ah pink?”

Pamela directed a doctorly glance over-the-top of her invisible glasses at the naughty ballerina. 

“I never suggest : I only expound.”

Harley, launched her lithe body into her woman’s svelte yet strong arms and smilingly moaned, “Oh, expound me, Pam! Expound me hard! Expound me all night long! Expound me 'till I..."

Pamela's facade cracked with snicker. ”How is it that you can make _everything_ dirty?"

Harleen gave her a peck on the lips. 

“It's one of my superpowers!”

Pamela laughed as she realized the essential truth of Harleen's would-be joke : "It _literally_ is! You're my _actually_ earthy, dirty wife!"

Behind Harleen but in full view of Pam, Triffy began to arouse amorously in response to the local pheromone concentrations : male and female floral structures began showing interest in each other ; Pamela spun about neatly on the balls of her feet, and marched out of the arboretum with her armful of Harleen.

"We're not getting anything on in front of our child!"

Harleen laughed and waved to the plant as she was carried away, stage left : "Bye Triff! Mommies will be back...eventually. Try not to be _too_ bad a baby, baby!"

*****************

1 hybrid floral & faunal characteristics.

  



	5. Capybara Chaos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Triffy goes for a bite out. Hijinks & hilarity ensue.

“Pam, hon, our kid’s gone!”

The addressed walked into the arboretum through the large, smooth hole in the the rusted structural steel.

“No kidding!”

“No kid!”

Harleen Quinzel Isley looked comically befuddled : “But…how?”

Pamela looked at the evidence : an earth banked crater where Triffy had been ; a collection of flowered vines parasitically latched onto trees, and a trail of green bespattered _root_ prints leading out through the arboretum’s new exit.

“Children have a way of surprising their parents, especially when they are made with more enthusiasm than science. I wonder what else Triffy is capable of?’ 

“Besides walking, self procreating, and melting things?” Harleen shrugged, an awkward smile turning up one corner of her mouth.

“Well we better get sher back before…”

The smile fled her face, parental concern flooding worry into her features : “Batgirl!”

“She’s going to treat Triffy just like any of my other babies : with weedkiller.”

“Why are we still talking? Let’s rescue Triffy!”

Pamela grabbed her other half before she could streak out.

“First, _pants_!”

*****

Under the cold light of a gibbous moon, green bioluminescent rootprints led the two women to a gaping hole in the perimeter wall of the Gotham Zoo.

“Oh oh, I think Triff’s hungry!”

Pamela facepalmed : “If sher’s eating panda, we’re going to be responsible for starting a war with China!”

Harleen giggled. “Nope, Triff wouldn’t even see a bear : sher’s into rodentia. They’re like her chicken wings.”

“I hope you’re right!” They gingerly stepped through the acid lined hole in the stone wall.

She was : they found Triffy in the now empty capybara enclosure, the squirming hindquarters of the final resident vanishing wetly into sher flowery maw.

The contented rasp of the plant’s emotive tendrils shifted to a new sound which, on the spot, Harleen decided was, along with the sudden droop of flower, a slow rasp of guilt.

A sound of nearing sirens made Pamela look in exactly the wrong direction at exactly the wrong time : Batgirl sprang from the shadows of the next cage, the bat aviary, to pin Poison Ivy to the ground.

Pamela reacted to the ambush in proper horror fashion : she screamed before her cerebrum took over from her hindbrain, and she recognized her attacker ; was about to reason with her when Harleen interrupted.

“Let go of my wife!”

She hefted her mallet ; started running towards the two sprawled women, fury in her eyes.

More out of shock than anything else, Batgirl released Ivy. She managed to roll away from the hammer blow ; sprang into a crouch atop the bat cage.

“Wife?” Then the question which had been subtly haunting Barbra for eight months was answered : “Super Girl and I busted up your love life eight months ago.” 

Ivy picked herself up off of the ground, ran to Quinzel’s side ; threw an arm about the wan woman. Harleen shook her mallet at her : “Cockblocking Bat Bitch!”

Barbra, not even wanting to think about the implications of Harley Quinn’s exclamation, pointed a yellow gauntlet at the monster plant ; tried not to show her distaste : “And that’s your…?”

“Kid? Yeah!”

“It isn’t looking too good!”

She was right : what Harleen had taken for the droop of guilt had continued ; the flower was rapidly withering as the stalk continued to sag.

“Triffy, what’s wrong?” Harleen ran to her baby. Much more schooled in the ways of flora, Pamela would have been totally clinical about the seemingly ailing plant, but Triffy was half of her own genetic destiny.

“Triffy developed new abilities prior to glutting sherself? I’ve seen this before : check for a seedpod.”

Fascinated, Bat Girl watched the couple scour the interior of the cage. Barbra Gordon knew that she wasn’t going to turn in what amounted to parents worried about their kid, even if the child was…highly unusual. That left the sizeable complications of how to account for the absence of a population of really large guinea pigs, and what appeared to be the most easily backtracked trail of all time. That left one course of action that she wasn’t sure the super villain lovebirds would accept. Well, she had to try, and gauging by the still relatively distant sounds of sirens, she had the luxury of ten minutes to bring them over to her way of thinking. 

Harley called out, excitedly : “ I’ve got a…flowering melon! is that it?”

“It must be! Now pick it up, and…”

“Run?”

Bat Girl readied a hero speech ; found she didn’t need to use it.

“No, honey! we’ve got to stay!”

“What?” holding the melon cradled to her like a football in one arm, stroked the almost totally dead Triffy with the hand of the other.  


Pamela, looking unhappy, explained.

“Even if they didn’t have a clear path all the way back to our home, the police would still know that I was involved. We have to take responsibility…”

“For the actions of our child.” Harleen sighed. 

Amazed by what she was witnessing, Barbra felt happy tears dampen her face. Damn it if she wasn’t going to put some good words in for the world’s oddest family unit. After all, it wasn’t like the plant had eaten the giant pandas on loan from the Chinese government. No one was going to miss a family or two of South American groundhogs ; more importantly, Chilean1 commandoes weren't going to seek violent recompense for the loss of a baker's dozen of creepily large rats.

*****************

1 Gordon's wrong : they're Brazilian rodents.

  



	6. Atypical Family Affairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The family unit grows by one more.

  


On the front steps of the night-rousted police commissioner's brownstone, watching the black torpedo of the Batmobile pull conservatively away from the curve, Barbara blurted, “I’m an aunt!” The two other women turned to look at her : holding Triffy’s seed pod in the crook of her left arm, Harleen Quinzel goggled at her with a dewy stare that was part disbelief, part relief ; Isley’s gaze was even more startling for its quiet gratitude. 

“You didn’t have to do that, Batgirl.”

Barbara looked into Isley's luminous green eyes.

“For messing with your happiness, I did.”

“Yea…” Pamela’s elbow interrupted her more demonstrative half with a jab to the gut.

“ _We_ thank you.”

Harleen glowered : “Did you see the look _he_ gave me?”

Pamela laughed : “You earned that glare with your _Pudd'n_ days!”

Harleen flung her hands up in surrender, a move calculated to showcase the taut body under thin satin. Pamela responded, her costume fading off of prettily blushed shoulders to reveal an impressive, barely civil décolletage quickly lost to view as Ivy grabbed up her red and black costumed partner for a lusty kiss and squeeze. 

Witnessing the display of affection, Barbara was glad that her new costume’s padding hid the stiff nipples that would have been super obvious in her old batsuit. Under the mask, her brow was damp as she watched the kissing couple. She knew that Pamela’s physiology was responsible for her aroused state, and she had dosed herself accordingly with her utility belted batch of anti-Ivy-toxin. What she didn’t know was the extent to which Harleen supercharged the sexual atmosphere, and suddenly under the influence of literal sexual chemistry, she drifted off into her own secret erotic yearnings. 

She thought, I wonder if Kara…, and began to fantasize about Supergirl abandoning her use of lycra shorts under her miniskirt. Her heart rate quickened and her eyes darkened as she imagined a flirty flash of blue boy shorts like the ones she had snatched from her friend's immaculately organized underwear drawer ; and were now dampening at Barbara's crotch. Her hand caressed her inner thighs as she stared off dreamily in the night sky towards the faint sky glow of Metropolis. 

Noticing the deliciously distracted Batgirl first, Harleen whispered in her spouse’s ear, “We better turn it down, Sugar Cane, we’re exciting the local wildlife!” 

“Wha?” Harleen turned Pamela’s head in the direction of one sexually stoned Barbara Gordon. She thought, _Who’re you fantasizing about?_ Pamela examined Batgirl's utility belt, selected a pouch ; dosed the dreamer with the small injector within. Barbra quickly returned to her senses.

“Did you increase the potency of your pheromones?” Gordon's head spun, and she felt the tide of need recede leaving behind it the damp beach of her naughtily filched undies. 

Pamela threw an arm about her spouse, drew her into a side squeeze the pressure of which teased the top of Pamela’s vegetable costume down over the hard emerald point of the breast that rubbed against Harleen’s satin clad body. 

“Our component physiologies intersect with a superlative degree of…”

Harleen laughed, flicked her sharp tongue over exposed nipple ; Pamela’s breathing quickened ; her costume retreated across the excited swell of the other breast which Harleen cupped in a pale hand. She turned to look at Barbara as she gently tweaked the newly revealed nub.

“Our nookie is extra whoopee!”

The fondled breathily exclaimed, “Ridiculously concise!”

Barbara was of two minds regarding her present situation : her forebrain wanted to stop an already beyond the pale public display of obscenity ; but her brainstem wanted to jump in and join the action. It was the thought of fooling around on the front steps of her father’s house that brought her around.

She whispered, “In Public?” 

Ivy regrew her modesty ; Harleen pouted.

“Sorry, both of us are new to not being naughty.” 

Barbara had to chuckle at the sight of the usually recalcitrant Poison Ivy actually looking somewhat apologetic.

“I guess I can’t expect too much discretion from either of you!” She straddled her Yamaha R-1 motorcycle, felt the crotch rocket stirrings of her already fired up amygdala as the four cylinder Big bang1 engine spooled up to full vibrational power ; distracted by her sudden machine induced orgasm, she skidded away from the curve with more speed than she had intended.

*****************

1Big-bang firing order is an actual engine alteration of ignition timing that allows for extra power at the costs of engine stress and bike control.

  



	7. Endings & Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cracks form in relationships and seedpods.

Bathed in the blue light of bioluminescent vines draped across the cathedral ceiling of the master bedroom, the slick pollen and petal dappled bodies of the lovers tangled and writhed in the mutually pleasurable sixty-nine knot. 

Harleen took the moist, perfumed edge of the lateral sepal of _Laelia anceps_ 1 gently in her teeth and tugged at in in time to her finger massaging smooth, sensitive ‘flesh’ where, in a normal physiology, the pucker of anus would be located ; the owner of the odd body cried out in appreciation ; she reciprocated, rimming Harleen’s meticulously pitcher plant detritivore cleansed anus with her emerald tongue. 

Harleen squealed happily : “I thought that I was the dirty girl in this relationship!”

“Since I no longer possess a gastrointestinal tract, and my _floribus pisces_ routinely clean yours, there’re exactly zero dirty girls here!” 

Harleen withdrew her mouth from Pamela’s nether regions, and winced : “Not actually dirty, Pam ; filthy minded! Ewww!”

A grin spread Pam’s mouth, it’s naughty intent obvious in her impish, “I still have a urethra….” Right in front of Harleen’s face, a pearl of liquid formed at the opening of the purple duct directly above the pale yellow sheathe of vagina. 

Harleen yelped, flung herself into a backflip, catching Pam in the side of the head with toned thighs. She backflipped across the room to spring atop a solidly framed if somewhat wobbly O’Keefe painting hanging from a cradle of vines.

“What part of I’m only a _figurative_ dirty girl do you not get?”

Holding her head, a laughing Pamela joked, “Okay, no golden showers! Now, come back to bed…” Pamela sprouted her clitoris, which became a perfect ninety degree yellow and red traceried sapling mast ; a suspicious Harleen eyed the growth.

“And where do you intend to plant your tree this time?”

Pamela wrapped her fingers around the shaft, and tried to sound casual.

“Oh, you know : in one _end_ or the other.”

As inducement, she ran her fingertips delicately over her glans, her hips raising and lowering her shaft to the calliope music of her shivery little moans and cries. Harleen’s eyes followed the piston action, her eyes darkening ; her sharp little tongue wetting parted lips.

Atop her artistic perch, Harleen, eyes shining, shrugged. “No butts about it : I’ve been an ass for not offering up mine!”

Pamela’s clitoral stem pulsed in anticipation, fluorescent precome glowing firefly trickles down its bonsai length. 

In deference to the worth and beauty of her swaying platform, Harleen eschewed acrobatics to carefully picking her way down the weave of viny wall ; safely on the ground she opted for her signature series of backflips carefully considered to end with her firm, slightly sweat-glazed backside positioned before the slick stamen of the standing Ivy. 

“Squeeze me a tube of lube before…”

Pamela smirked, grabbed herself some pale hip : “Will CnH2n+2 suffice?”

“Hon, we both have doctorates but in _different_ fields!”

Pamela snickered at her chemistry joke : “Petroleum jelly, silly”

Harleen waggled her butt, countered punningly : “Give me a thorough derricking!” 

Pamela closed her eyes, the spot just above her nose wrinkling in concentration ; her urethra widened ; began spurting translucent jelly across the comely crevice of Harley’s bottom. 

Harleen giggled at the sensation of her anus and a good quantity of the rest of her ass being coated in a mess of body temperature goo ; the giggle turned into a surprised squawk as Pamela eased herself into the tight pink pucker of anus.

Across the room, in the vine and flower adorned bassinet, the seed began to sprout : a green crown of head pushed out of widening flower. 

****************

1Laelia anceps is a type of orchid.


	8. Babymakers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Triffy mk. 2.

  


On all fours, an unimpressed Harleen received Pamela’s wifely stamen up the cleansed terminal of her GI tract.

“Hey, back there, grow it out a bit : I ain’t feeling it!”

Eyes closed and focussed solely upon where her body intersected Harleen’s, Pamela was also not feeling anything special enough to buttress ingress upon a point of egress. 

“Is Bonsai to Jack Pine fine, hon?

Harleen grinned at her from over a pale , tattooed—cap and bells—shoulder.

“Jack me up before I begin to pine for better loving!” 

Being a M.D. before her Psychiatric training, Dr. Quinzel suspected that the newly pleasurable feeling within her stern was caused by stimulation of her inferior rectal nerve by her lover's slightly larger member.

She put a little moan into her voice : “That’s better, but you better jack me off, too.”

Pamela complied, rubbing her green thumbs over Harleen’s genitals ; was surprised by the relatively dry reception. 

Fondling Harleen's ivory dimples of Venus with her free hand, Pamela cooed, “Do you need _more_ tree, sweetie?”

Harleen’s other end, pointing in the direction of the bassinet, abruptly declared, “Triffy’s hatc…germinated!”

She wriggled off of Pamela, forward rolled off of the bed ; launched a handspring bringing her next to something small by the cradle. 

On the floor next to the bassinet, a plant analogue of a baby wriggled.

Triffy was a plant puzzling out how to be a human, and doing a interesting job of it : a weave of muscular vine bunches swelled over a skeleton of hardwood visible here and there through gaps in a vegetable anatomy that included immature genitalia of both sexes. The face was particularly uncanny. Twin Venus Flytrap constructs held the position of eyes that, judging by the way the childlike bipedal plant groped delicately about with its feet and hands, did not actually function. The mouth, a slash of crimson flower, albino thorns and a delicate tongue vine worked in the awkward fashion of an owner playing with a marvellous new toy. 

Harleen squealed, gently scooping up the newest form of her child ; as she did, tiny dual pollen puffs from sightless eye flowers attracted two of the honey bees busily working the room’s flora. Upon landing on their respective flowers, both bees were suddenly entrapped within flytrap eyelids. 

Harleen cooed, “Who’s mommy’s little…” 

The red fringed lashes fluttered open to reveal calm bees affixed to the body by delicate vine umbilici. They buzzed contentedly in their new and mostly symbiotic existence as Triffy saw one of her parents for the first time. Sher formed her mouth in enough of a smile that Harleen’s smile only grew in proud if somewhat astounded parent size.

“…bee eyed baby?” Harleen wasn’t going to be taken aback by anything _her_ child did. “You are, Triffy! You are!” 

Pamela came up behind her wife : “Let’s see baby!” Harleen passed Triffy over to Pamela ; she had no choice but to return the awkwardly infectious baby grin.

“A parasitic or commensal1 form of vision? Honey, we make the best babies!”

*****************

1A type of connection between two organisms in which one benefits while the other is unharmed.

  



	9. A Baumshell for Babs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon's alive...and she's an aunt about to meet her meta-nephew/niece for the first time since sher's second seeding.

Batgirl tried desperately to feel like she wasn’t being led into a deathtrap as, blindfolded, she was led by the elbows by Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. It brought out her inner Dorothy with a jittery, “Lions, tigers and bears, oh my!” 

On her left, she heard Pamela’s droll, “ Dandelions, tiger lilies and pears, oh my!”

On her right, she heard Harleen’s pouty, “But I’m Dorothy, aren’t I?” 

It was an unreal situation ; Barbara attempted an unreal solution : “We’re _all_ Dorothy?”

Gordon heard Poison Ivy snigger : “Not that long ago you’d have me pegged as Theodora Thropp1!”

Barbra had no idea what that meant, and judging by Quinn’s confused laughter, neither did she ; but before she could inquire of the crazy woman, her blindfold vine snaked away, and she was dumbfounded by what she saw.

A sleek, green girl danced amongst the varied trees of the arboretum. 

“That can’t be Triffy, can it?”

The proud parents smiled : Pamela quietly ; Harleen with goofy glee. 

“Sher’s the snapdragon that grows like dandelion!”

Barbara was nonplussed. “Why are you still using a non-binary pronoun? Triffy’s gone girl!”

Pamela adopted a professorial manner : “Only for the moment. Triffy’s externalized sexual characteristics alter according to mood : negativism manifests as masculine, positivism as feminine ; equilibrium as both.”

Harleen piped in, “Triff’s only a dick when she’s mad, bad or sad!”

Pamela reached around the astounded Gordon to lightly box the blonde head of her partner. 

“How can you be so concise yet so silly?”

Harley struck a heroic pose: “Super power!”

“Is Triffy wearing sunglasses?” Iridescent coruscations of light flashed from the dancer’s eyes as sher wove in and out of the shafts of sunlight piercing the ruined roof of the oil storage tank.

“Sher’s our bug-eyed baby!”

Pamela sighed. “She’s nuts but not wrong. ” She wrinkled her brow, and a vine descended from the tangle of steel and greenery of the canopy ceiling to touch the shoulder of the woodland dancer. Triffy startled, turned to look with compound eyes at the three women, two relaxed ; one even more astounded than before.

It was a slender boy who approached the women with wary grace.

“We want Triff to consider you as she does us, but the only way that we know how to do that is…”

Pamela slipped an arm around Barbara’s waist, pulled her into a kiss ; she suddenly understood why she had been instructed to double dose herself with her Poison Ivy preventatives that morning. Even then, Pam was quite the kisser ; she felt her head swim slightly under the influences of pheromones. She squared her mental shoulders and fantasized about kissing Kara. 

She repeated the process with Harley, who had a moment of ‘ewww!’ : “Who thought that I’d ever kiss a bat?” 

It was a serviceable smooch ; it did the intended job. 

Eyes glittering, Triffy’s externalized sexuality shifted to feminine, ; sher opened her mouth, dispensed a puff of pollen.

"Triffy speaks the language of flowers.”

“Barbara sniffed. “What does daffodil mean?”

Before Pamela could answer, Barbara got her answer : a hug from the newest addition to the patchwork family. 

“Never mind : I’ve figured it out.”

 

**************

1Pamela has accidentally conflated two names for the Wicked Witch of the West : Theodora is from Disney’s Great & Powerful Oz (2013) and Thropp is the surname of the Witch from the novel and stage musical, Wicked (2003). Pam just presumes that the surname from the one fits the given name of the second. She has an idiosyncratic grasp of the Baum canon.

  



	10. Ampere Warning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Livewire gets the shock of her life.

Chasing her three compatriots in kin across the moonlit rooftops of Gotham’s theatre district, Poison Ivy frowned suddenly. She paused, a puzzled laugh chasing the frown from her green face. The others took up her laughter in their own ways : Harleen’s Bronx mezzo-soprano wreathed bright guffaws into Pamela’s contralto chuckles, Triffy’s perfumed the air about them with roils of chrysanthemum and marigold ; Barbara chuckled. Then that something she couldn't quite quantify made Pamela scowl again ; then she understood : standing above them and lit dramatically by a marquee for _Wicked 2 : What a World!_ , the spiky blue haired figure of Livewire stared mockingly down at the family unit. 

Her voice, even more caustic than usual, arrowed down at the family : “Holy fuck, Cheshire _really_ wasn’t shitting me!”

Pamela thought, why am I suddenly on high alert? but what she said aloud was, “About what, Livewire?”

Willis smirked, “Your freaky…” She slid electrically into an empty bulb socket in the marquee to sizzle back into existence from a rooftop electrical plug. “… little family!” She sauntered around the family unit.

She gestured obscenely. “Did it take all all three of you to fuck that _thing_ into the world?” 

Barbara laughed, “Wow, that was rude even for you!”

Nonplussed, Livewire paused, a confused expression fleeting across her sardonic facial features. she stared at the caped and cowled woman. 

“You look like Batbitch, but…”

Barbara’s smile widened to a grin : “I don’t sound like her?” 

Willis took in the two women flanking Batgirl ; her eyes widened in sudden understanding.

“The good girl’s been fucked _bad!_!”

It was time for the other three adult women to appear startled ; then clutch at each other, howling with laughter. Willis, attempting to remain sardonic, fidgeted. This sure isn’t like our last meeting, she thought. Looks like I really set up the _dead_ opposite of what I wanted! How can I fuck this up for them?

The green teen stood slightly apart, her compound eyes assessing the mystery of the unfolding scene, feminine curves altering subtly into masculine when sher gaze turned upon the troublesome visitor. Witnessing the sudden narrowing of Triffy’s pelvis and the reduction of chest from an A cup to a no-cup, Willis turned her full scathing attention to the teenager.

Livewire pointed a blue finger at Triffy : “Holy shit, is that _thing_ changing sex?” 

Pamela frowned. “It’s an emotional response, a negative one : to you.”

Willis sneered ; Triffy’s alteration accelerated, 'her' jaw and facial lines hardening into masculine rage ; and sher's body literally fumed pungent basil1. 

“That’s the biggest frea…” Triffy’s mouth snapped open, and a green coated and barbed tendril flashed across the half meter distance to sting Livewire's neck. Willis squawked in surprise, her eyes flaring in panic ; she dropped poleaxed to the rooftop. Her final conscious thought was as astute as it was oddly calm : Well, if anything was going to get me killed, it was my _fucking_ big mouth.

Pamela exclaimed, “What do you know, Triffy really is a triffid2!”

Barbara ran to the fallen asshole, administered antitoxin.

Harleen griped, “Can’t we just let nature take it’s course?”

Barbara gave her a stern look, and continued her ministrations.

Triffy changed back into a calm androgyny.

Harleen threw an arm around Pamela's waist, drew her spouse into a clutch ; matter of factly said, "Our kid's a better judge of character than we are."

Pamela rejoined with, "We must be _excellent_ parents!"

Having administered the exactly correct dosage of antitoxin--Barbara had been doing it enough as to become very proficient--to the unconscious Willis, she declared, "I'll agree when _your_ teenager stops trying to solve awkward social situations with _neurotoxin_!"

******************

1 Basil represented hatred in ancient Greece (Wikipedia). 

2 Of course Poison Ivy has a first edition of John Wyndham's novel, Day of the Triffids (1951) in her collection of vegetable art & literature.

  



	11. Fall in Love Fallout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara's Metropolis apartment is nerdy as Spock! Within it, a new relationship blooms.

The apartment was a nerdy explosion of celluloid extraterrestrial fandom. A cluster of framed movie posters of _This Island Earth_ , _George Pal's War of the Worlds_ , and _Invaders from Mars_ splashed lurid images of invasion on one wall ; across from the wall with the much gentler posters of _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_ , _Starman_ and _The Man Who Fell to Earth_. Plastic and resin figurines abounded : Marvin the Martian stood diminutively next to a gleaming Martian Tripod, an insectile xenomorph loomed threateningly over E.T., and a Borg and Cyberman vied for cyborg ascendancy. The light of a television playing a black and white movie cast flickering shadows over all of the memorabilia.

“Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking! Keep watching the skies!”

The movie ended with dramatic theremin music and the lightning bolted RKO logo. 

The two women were seated at either end of a loveseat with an enormous bowl of buttered popcorn separating them. The red miniskirted blonde addressed the green sundress wearing redhead : “What have we learned?”

Barbara Gordon ticked off items on her fingers. “Scientists are naive.” Tick. “Military men will save us.” Tick. “Women exist to make coffee, scream and marry military men .” Tick. “Pamela Isley will root for the wrong plant!” Tick. “The most important lesson : hate aliens!” The thumb tick was interrupted by a salvo of fluffy corn. Barbara picked a popped kernel from her lap, popped it in her mouth : “You asked!”

Kara Danvers smirked, read the metadata on the back of a DVD case. “Those were lessons from the far off times of 1951. Let’s see what we learn from 1982 and…” She finished reading the blurb. “John Carpenter’s alien.” She switched out the discs in her LexCorp media player, turned down the living room lights ; returned to her end of the small sofa.

After the retro corniness of Fifties horror, the combination of the simple A Universal Film white script on a black background and the quietly eerie synthesizer music made the two lounging women sit up and fidget apprehensively : this Thing was going to be a different thing. 

By the discovery of the empty ice sarcophagus, both women were no longer lazily lounging. During the first autopsy scene, they were both bolt upright on either side of the popcorn bowl. When faux Bennings was flare & fuel immolated, Barbara startled, spilling her white wine into the now forgotten popcorn. The defibrillator doctor-maw monster made her clutch at Kara, wine wetted popcorn spraying across glass topped coffee table, couch and women. Kara’s delighted expression showed not a care in the world for the shambles. She stroked the red hair of her freaked out comrade as she held her close until the final heartbeat throb of the apocalyptic ending. 

She looked into Barbara’s eyes : “What have we learned?”

“Scientists are violent.” Tick. “Alcoholic loners are terrible leaders” Tick. “What women?” Tick. “Burn it, burn it, burn it!“ Tick. “The most important lesson is : _love_ aliens!” She tilted her face up, pursed her lips ; received a kiss that very quickly lost its tentative awkwardness. They withdrew from their first relationship smooch with a shared look of wonderment.

Kara solemnly addressed her girlfriend : “I was going to demand the return of my panties, but now that we're a thing..."

Barbara blushed the colour of her hair.


	12. Breaking the Cycle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Triffy discovers a hobby, as KarBabs visits PamQuin.

Summary:

Triffy discovers a hobby, and two couples engage : hilarity ensues!

  
  


The motorcycle glimmered like a mescaline dream in the green and blue bioluminescence of the greenest garage ever grown. Chromium exhaust manifolds and detailing stood out against the hard glint of black metal and the deeper sheens of carbon fibre cowling and leather seating. 

Fingers running gently and deliberately over the entirety of the machine anatomy, a crouching Triffy, eyes closed, seemed to be reading the bike’s brail. As she felt the convolutions, crevasses and components, her facial and bodily features slowly shifted from androgenic equilibrium to undeniably feminine exuberance. Sher grinned as her fingers first tested and then began unloosening the first bolt ringing the jet metal casing of jet metal engine housing. 

****

Barbara Gordon sat in the craziest, loveliest chair in the midst of the craziest, loveliest room she had ever seen : the four chairs were living crochets of flowering vines suspended from the leafy canopy spun across the ruins of the oil storage tank. The two hanging planter chairs opposite her were occupied by the couple who resided at the onetime tank farm ; the chair next to her was taken by her partner, the wide eyed Kara. Everyone held a drink.

Harleen had a coconut with a hole for a straw, a hole for a fancy drink umbrella, and a corked bunghole to ensure that there was more than just milk in the nut ; Pamela sipped a red wine inelegantly eddying within the oversized bowl of a brandy snifter1 ; Kara gently pinched the martini glass stem of a cosmo the colour of her cape, Barbara, having ridden to the lair on her beloved Yamaha r1, made do with a virgin sangria in a large, sweating tumbler. The conversation, in between sips, was as far from the typical arch nemesis confab as anyone in it could have ever imagined.

A rapt smile on her pale face, Harleen leant forward towards their newest visitor from a far flung star : “For how long did you know Bat Babe was hot for you?”

“Just after that time she broke you guys up!”

Harleen leant almost off the edge of her floral seat.

“What’d she do?”

Their respective partners reacted differently to the proceedings : still intimidated a bit by Supergirl’s presence, Pamela’s prim poise relaxed slightly at her awesome visitor’s playful antics ; knowing exactly where her girlfriend’s story was heading, Barbara squirmed and blushed, albeit less brightly and wriggly than when Kara had caught her out during their movie night that had turned into their very first date. 

Kara gave Barbara a sidelong glance, cupped her mouth ; stage whispered, “She snatched my favourite thong from my underwear drawer!”

Laughing delightedly, Harleen fell off of her perch. 

Barbara interrupted with an indignant, “Thong? Try boy shorts! You don’t even…” The other three regarded her with various levels of amusement : Harleen howled, Pam smiled ; Kara grinning, reached over, deftly picked up her woman ; parked her in her lap

“Can’t I dress up the story a little?” She kissed Barbara’s pout, which lessened considerably. 

“Don’t you mean _dress down_?”

“Boy shorts are practically boxers ; who ever got excited about _boxer shorts_?”

“I did!” Barbara returned the kiss.

The other couple watched : Harleen, chin cradled in her hands, hair sprouting lovely black and red blossoms of Harley Hearts ; Pamela, eyes glistening, missed her mouth and sloshed wine on her emerald skin : it didn’t really matter as her epidermis absorbed the alcohol more efficiently than her partially fabricated mammalian gastrointestinal tract could ever hope to achieve. 

Harleen dreamily asserted, “They’re _adorable_!”

Pamela was about to agree with a most unscientific response when everything was interrupted.

Teen Triffy bustled into the chamber with a collection of sloshing cups of various fluids which she placed before her parents with a pleading look. 

Pam dipped a finger into the first container, touched it to her tongue analogue vine ; stated, “Ethylene glycol : antifreeze.” She tasted the second of three containers. 

“Alkylated Naphthalene : synthetic lubricant.” She moued, dipped and tasted the final cup.

“C8H18 : gasoline.”2

Listening to the list of fluids, Barbara startled. “That sounds like…”

“…my bike.” The four women and one teenager looked down at the neatly disassembled corpse  
of Batgirl’s Bat-Cycle. 

Kara grinned : “You can ride me home!”

Barbara blushed the colour of her hair, again. 

Pamela griped, "Our scion3 can't like _internal_ combustion : it's not _right_!"

Harleen threw a pale arm about her wife's waist, groped a taut, emerald buttock.

"You _did_ say children have a way of surprising their parents!"

Pamela choked back a retort ; reciprocated the amorous clasp.

"So I did!" She didn't look entirely happy, but she realized that parents did have to let go of all expectations regarding their spawn. She could only hope that it would become easier with time.

*************

1 As previously hinted at, Pam Isley is not the most sophisticated or worldly of plant women. 

2 Actually it’s high octane, but Pam doesn’t make that fine a distinction regarding the evils of fossil fuels!

3 A young shoot or twig of a plant and a family descendant. 

  



	13. Rhubarb & Reconciliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pamela has a run-in with the daughter she doesn't really know all that much about ; Harleen seeks to educate her.

Pamela has a run-in with the daughter she doesn't really know all that much about ; Harleen seeks to educate her.

  
  


Pamela slashed a jade hand in the classic gesture of denial.

“No more motorcycles this month!”

Triffy’s femininity eroded down to the hard planes of stubborn masculinity. Sher stamped a foot every bit as green as Pamela’s, and filled the air with a shout of almond bitterness. 

Pamela smothered it with a peppery exhalation that made Harleen’s eyes water ; Triffy narrowed her no longer exclusively composite eyes—there were far fewer facets to the eyes, and the iridescent sheen was altering towards a metallic blue—and stormed from the room.

“I thought you said you’d support sher's new hobby?”

Pamela smiled ruefully : “I’m trying, but it’s gone from a hobby to an _industry_.”

Harleen grinned, “You’re _very_ trying, sugar!” She wrapped her arms around Pamela, slid hands down the smooth musculature of her partner’s lower back ; fastened her right alabaster fingers upon the firm fanny, the fingers of the sinister sliding under the curve of buttock to tease across floral flesh. Pamela shivered with a murmur of pleasure and a whisper of mint as Harleen slipped a index digit within the slippery smoothness of her orchid vulva at the same time as she whispered in her seashell ear, “That means Triff’s successful! What’s thirty more bikes to the world?” Harleen punctuated the question with the pad of her thumb rubbing gentle circles over a rapidly stiffening yellow nub of clitoris. 

Pleasurable sensations began at the emerald extremities of Pamela : her toes and fingertips began to tingle, loose their vegetative sheathe to expose smooth, flushed skin ; the jasmine scent of her arousal perfumed the air. She breathed, “ I know, but sher’s such aAHH! _boy_ about it all that it makes me crazy!”

Harleen middle finger joined her index deep within Pamela’s glistening orchid folds. Pamela bucked her hips at the extra stimulation, cried out ; her costume faded entirely as climax blossoms sprouted crimson across her nudity as she climaxed sprays of jasmine pollen, and spurts of golden honeysuckle come. Stoned on the chemistry and beauty of her lover’s orgasm, her blue eyes almost all pupils, Harleen literally drank her in. 

Cuddling her purposefully sweaty boo—Pamela sweated only to further effuse her sexual chemistry—, Harleen continued the orgasm interrupted conversation.

“You need to see sher at work, sweet pea : it’s a purely girly1 garage! The _boy_ only shows when you two butt heads over bikes.”

“Isn’t it enough that I…” Harleen zapped her with the spousal eye-roll ; Pam readjusted : “ _we_ built her an island of concrete and oil within _our_ Eden?”

Harleen shook her head vigorously, her twin bunches swaying blonde willow droops.

“Nope!” Harl knitted her brow, and her bikini of delicate vines and tiny black and red Harley Heart’s blooms slithered up her body and into her hair. She tiptoe pressed against Pam, her pert B cups smooshing excitingly against Pamela’s Ds. 

Pamela continued to argue : “But we’re only talking _minor_ feminine happiness, right? I have zero problem squashing a little A-cup happiness.”

Harleen planted a lick kiss on emerald hollow of throat.

“Can you squash a D-cup's worth of happiness?”

Pamela’s eyes widened, mostly in pleasure at Harleen’s roaming mouth, but also in realization of her mistake at avoiding what she had thought was merely a hobby and not a passion of her teenaged child. She regrew her costume ; Harleen found herself tonguing verdant ivy covering Ivy. 

“It makes sher that happy?”

A grinning Harleen held her hands out in front of her own perky pair as if they were two extra cups of mamma. 

“Boobilant!”

Pamela rolled her emerald eyes : "Even I can tell that that's a _terrible_ pun!"

"Boobphoric?" The hands added an udder size increase, and a laughing Pam said, "Tits something I have to see!"

"Now that's the breast pun I've heard all day!" Harleen slipped a pale arm around Pam's jade waist, rested her hands atop an exciting swell of buttock ; drew her spouse towards the arboretum's exit.

"Sher'll be so pleased to see you!"

**************

  


1 Girly is a emotional descriptor regarding Triffy’s physical appearance when she is happy : very feminine. In no way does it describe the look of the motorcycle garage.

  



	14. Spheres of Influence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Various spheres of influence, one literal, are revealed.

  


The one intact structure of the Victory Tank Depot reflected an orb distorted image of the constellation of the Gotham skyline dominated by the cyclopean cataract of a full moon. The most obvious alteration to the original structure, an open garage door and ramp grafted to the side of the strut supported sphere, spilled electric light into the humid night. The two women, silhouetted by the harsh illumination, stood at the base of the ramp.

Pamela, hands on hips, complained, “Of course sher’s garage is in the one part of the depot where my plants won't take!"

Standing next to her, Harleen swatted her on the verdant bum.

"It's called a Horton sphere1." She held up a mouldering book she had cradled in the crook of her right, non-butt smacking arm ; opened it to a bookmarked page, read aloud : "Experimental pressurized Horton sphere for exotic fuel storage." She flipped pages, continued, " Nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine separated in discrete storage modules." She flipped the book over her shoulder. "That's why nothing grows here : inorganic nightmare fuel."

Pamela looked horrified : "And our kid's using it as sher playground?"

Harleen wasn't too sure herself, but she was damned if she was going to let a little history impede her in her family repairs. "Pshaw, seventy years ago! Everything's fine!" Before Pamela could retort, Harleen bent down and retrieved a gun like device stowed in a carefully hidden container next to the ramp. She handed the tool to Pamela.

“I was going to give this to Triff, but I think that, given the situation, it’s best if you do.”

Pamela hefted the tool : “What is it?”

Harleen kissed her on the emerald tip of nose ; solemnly said, “You not being a dick, honey bunch!”

Understanding the sentiment but not the the gift, Pamela took her spouse’s hand with her free left one ; prepared to enter what was literally Triffy’s sphere of influence. Harleen squirmed her hand out of the clasp, pressed it open palmed firmly over Pam’s sternum in between breasts that were as mammalian as they were actually clothed. 

“Sher _was_ pretty pissed at you! Give me a minute to find out if you need to antitoxin yourself before you go in!”

“You know sher better than I.” The realization made her do something that had only happened once before when she had discovered that she was _treasured_ : she wept, her nose ran ; she blubbered, “I don’t even have lacrimal glands or nasal cavities, and...an....”

Harleen cradled her : “We’ve changed each other!” She plucked a bloom that had sprouted up from a tear wetted spot on her chest, and used it to wipe away the moisture of her lover’s sadness. She kissed her fondly, and led her over the threshold into the cool, metallic and concrete interior of Triffy’s garage. Harleen cartwheeled under the central glow of spotlights shining down upon a carefully sheeted presumed motorbike, executed a slow circus ringmaster spin, her arms raised to the audience of one.

“Here’s where our Triff’s making a name for sherself!”

As if on cue, the door of one of six radial vehicle bays banged open ; Triffy emerged walking a instantly recognizable Yamaha R1, Batgirl’s bat-ride. Her curvy femininity shrank a cup size at the sight of sher difficult parent and a warily hopeful sweet scent of mimosa pudica mixed with the perfumes of oil and ozone. 

Harleen gave Pamela’s posterior a push, and a sheepishly grinning Pam held up her offering.

She saw herself minutely reflected within the metallic irises of insect eyes that were mimicking human design ; she thought, We’re all becoming more human. 

Her jewel eyes widening, her mimosa scent swelling, and the physical curvature of her happiness swelling, Triffy took Pamela’s hand ; placed it on the tarpaulin covered item. 

Pamela pulled the sheet. It fell away from the retro teardrop body of a forest green Henderson Excelsior Streamline2 the dismounted engine of which was plugged into a gently chugging generator. 

Pamela found herself becoming weepy again : “You’re making me an electric bike?” 

Triffy nodded happily, rose aroma bursting fragrant fireworks.

A very happy Harleen squished the family into a hug.

****

Pamela breezed through the red lacquered wood and green accent lighting of a well forested kitchen to plant a kiss between the hair bunches of a breakfasting Harleen. 

The wan woman spoke with a mouth full of over easy egg, a stringer of yolk running down her chin. 

“Off to do your PART3 symposium?”

Pam moued : “To be stalked by _Stormwatch_ the entire time.” She sighed, “What do I have to do to convince that ridiculous _Eminence of Blades_ that I’m not conspiring to launch the plant revolution?”

Actually dressed in a relatively demure skirt suit, Harleen mopped up the remnants of her sunny side eggs with her rye toast, popped the dripping wedge into her mouth, chewed thoughtfully ; swallowed.

“Nothing : that prick thinks his job security rests on his believing you’re still a vill.” 

“That’s _comforting_. He went out of his way at the first conference to inform me that all of his blades were coated with defoliant!” 

“Old me would say feed him to the hyenas ; new me says, feed him to sensitivity training. If it's anything like my social rehabilitation experience..." She comically shivered : "being gobbled up by wild dogs is faster, cleaner, and far less painful!" 

"I'll try it." Pam sighed : " Working _with_ the system still feels weird!”

Sensing her spouse's melancholy, Harleen sprang up from her kitchen island stool, and enthusiastically bussed her wife with sunny-side yolked lips.

“How much did working _against_ get you?”

Pamela absorbed the yellow smear into her epidermis, physiologically corrected her mussed labial colouration ; smiled her repaired pale pink lips, “Regular room and board at Arkham Institute.”

“That was us : sorority sisters of Phi Wacko Gaga!” She leapt onto the island, scattered her plates, spilled her coffee ; flashed a generous glimpse of hot pink tanga. “Now look at us : you’re saving the Amazon ; and I’m,” She flexed heroically, “Single-handedly strangling the Sahara!” 

Pamela dryly noted, “That’s _quite_ the image.” 

“That’s why I’m _fully_ dressed this morning : I’m off to supervise a week long field test of my latest batch of S& and SeEden4!”

Pamela frowned : "I thought that that was next week."

Harleen giggled, embarrassed : "Yeah, I screwed up the date in my agenda!" She waggled her Wayne Electronics _Quasar_ smartphone.

Pamela rolled her eyes. “What about Triff? Remember the last time we left sher alone?”

Harleen grimaced : “Who knew Capybaras cost so much?” The grimace turned upside down. “Don’t worry, I’m taking Triff : there’s a cache of rare Italian motorcycles that we’re picking up in Timbuktu.” 

“Oh, good. More bikes.” 

***********

1A pressure tank invented in the early Twentieth century to store an array of liquids and gasses. To this author's knowledge, there has never been a shiny titanium one.

http://www.cbi.com/What-We-Do/Fabrication-Services/Storage-Tanks-Vessels/Hortonsphere-Pressure-Vessels 

2 A very cool motorcycle design that would have been right at home in the retro look of Batman : The Animated Series.

http://www.goliath.com/auto/the-12-best-classic-motorcycles/?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=outbrain&utm_campaign=GO_OBN_US_MOBI&cus_widget=00a0885bfd27eb4da34beee1a037144923&utm_content=motorcycles_premium_2017 

3 Protect Amazonian Rainforest Territory 

4 S& : S _and_ is a nutrient rich desert additive ; SeEden encompasses a range of crop seeds adapted for extreme heat and low water conditions.

  



	15. Barge in Africa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harleen's Sahara project requires scientists : enter Picabo Radley, her main squeeze, Lacie Liddell ; and Kat Kabra and her belle,

The test patch of desert spread a surf of sand over the palmy fringe of the unhurried waters of the Niger which washed about the hull of the river barge riding at anchor midstream. Binoculars and walkie talkie in hand, Harleen oversaw her two lead scientists and their teams ; one, tall, blue-black skinned, muscular, lycra shorted & crop-topped, tended to the contents of a squat, wide crate down by the stern ; the other, blonde, pale, Rubenesque, catsuited1, oversaw the erection of the project apparatus surrounding the experimental site. Both women wore robotic cat ears which whirred, turreted and twitched atop their heads while they conversed until a muddy, nude Triffy Isley Quinn, dripping and elfin, surprisingly popped up over the side of the barge.

An exasperated Harleen enquired, “Naked, again? Where’d you stash your clothes this time?" 

Triffy shrugged with a unconcerned scent of mint ; started drifting over in the direction of a ’a red and black ’52 VW Beetle with oversized tyres and heavily modified suspension that was chained to the deck. Harleen groused under her breath, “I knew that I should have brought one of those Timbuktu bikes along!”

She gently admonished her essentially elder teenaged child : “Don’t futz around with the engine, sweetie!"

Triff ran a hand over the hood, her dual sexuality shrinking to smirking masculine as sher, staring directly at Harleen, levered it up ; was lemony surprised by the lack of engine.

Harleen chuckled at the sight of a masculine and almond fumed Triffy stomping to the other end of the car. Harleen was partway through a farewell shrug to her ride when a melodious contralto still slightly blurred by years of childhood deafness, interrupted both her shrug and her offspring’s trunk handle turning.

“You can't have that, but you can have..." The well built black woman's voice had the minor timbre distortion of one who had been profoundly deaf. She offered Triffy the delicate insect steel and plastic of a quad copter drone that she held out in a upward two open palmed fashion. "... this pretty trinket!" 

Triffy Abandoned the car, ran over, all wide metallic eyed and peppermint scent, to the proffered drone ; handled the robot, sher's body shifting to intrigued cranberry scented feminine curvatures as she scampered off with sher treasure.

Harleen thumbed-up the woman who wore the whirring analogue of gently twitching tented cat ears projecting from her carefully barbered shock of dark hair. 

“I thought my Beetle was going to be nothing but parts!” The ears swivelled towards Harleen, and the tall woman laughed.

“Soon sher’ll be adding drones to her inventory!”

Harleen imagined a motorcycle roaring along a highway surrounded by an outrider formation of twinkling metal insects : “Peanut butter and jam!”

Picabo Radley didn’t know whether to be glad or worried that she could think like her boss, the onetime super villain steady of the Joker and now-time spouse of Poison Ivy. She decided to be glad : “Cigars and cognac ; kibbles and bits ; furries and fanfic!”

Harleen nodded, sagely. “A catgirl in every plot and a mecha in every garage!3”

****

Radley’s crew watched the two women they considered almost as weird as the sexually fluid motorcycle obsessed Triffy-thing as they confabbed at the prow of the barge.

“Kat, are you _sure_ they’re not _still_ super villains?”

The svelte Indian woman played with the top golden button of her white, lab coat styled kameez2 “Kan, the only thing I’m sure of is the size of our paycheques!”

Her raven tressed partner grabbed her by the pert butt, stood on her tiptoes ; planted a hummingbird tongued kiss upon Kabra's mouth. 

“ Áang4, that’s enough zeros to make me not care for whom we’re working!”

“Amen!” Kat returned the kiss and grabbed her own grip of her lover's glutes. 

****

Almond emerald eyes twinkled in a high cheek boned physiognomy that made Harleen feel like a pug faced geisha. “We’re ready to roll, boss!”

Harleen did a little dance. “Yay! Tell your squeeze to stand by ; I’m getting the backers!” She cartwheeled towards the chopper the no longer bored pilot of which was already spinning up for flight.

Watching the copter clatter away to collect the money, Picabo Radley raised the walkie talkie to her mouth : “How're you doing, tigress?”

The curiously uninflected voice answered, “All systems are at operational standby, lioness."

"I _already_ know that, kitten. How are you doing?"

"When can we see the big cat preserve?”

The slurred voice of the muscular black woman thrummed with the lilt of love. “As soon as we’re done with the field test, babe. We'll steal the chopper as soon as the boss squares away the money.”

“Steal?” The voice contained a vestige of something that sounded like an attempt to sound alarmed.

Picabo grinned at her purposefully playful language : “Figurative, sugar : borrow the helicopter.”

“Hooray. I like working for Harleen Quinzel : she is not normal.”

Radley's grin smoothed out into a gentle smile : Lacie Liddell had imparted her highest praise, and it almost certainly meant that she would actually be able to shake off her selective mutism when she was next in Harleen Quinzel’s presence.

“She’s our type of people, alright!”

“Boo, did you know that lions are the only big cat that…”

Picabo took a seat on the edge of the barge and listened to her girlfriend’s lion lecture. There was plenty of time before the herd of potential project backers would be wrangled to the site by the boss.

****

Triffy peered through the crack of the door of the quonset hut : the plump woman seated at the workbench was busily assembling something that in no way resembled the squadron of assembled and partial helicopter drones which cluttered and clustered about the temporary space. The hint of motorcycle grace in the small mechanical frame held in the grasp of clamps was too much for Triffy ; the gravity of curiosity dragged sher in.

Disturbed from her work, the unkempt blonde regarded the cranberry fragranced invader with a gaze that was panicky in a distanced almost dreamy manner ; then she saw the drone that Triffy clutched, saw how it had been altered from its original design ; and abstract anxiety fell away for a look of concrete fascination. She gestured for the nude, slightly feminine green teen to join her at the bench ; Triffy, becoming a little more womanly in sher confidence, squished her now slightly daffodil perfumed nudity up next to Liddell on the stool, and placed the drone next to the delicate workings of the clamped robot ocelot.

They each began to explore the other's item.

***********

1 A tiger onesie, and not a sexy catsuit : Lacie's really into big cats!

2 A long Indian tunic.

3A riff off of Herbert Hoover's 1928 Republican campaign's, 'A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.'

4 Haida language (noun) : Yes 


	16. Donne Dating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A gift gets out of orbit and very nearly out of hand.

  


“You’re into photography?” Her voice muffled by the pressurized hemet, Barbara had to yell into Kara’s ear over the shriek of air. Startled, Kara dropped her camera ; swooped after it, Barbara shrieking in roller coaster entertainment terror as she decided that she wasn't secure enough with just her thighs clamped to Kara's lower back : she leant in against Kara's back as much as the reconditioned SR-711 flight suit would allow, grabbed at torso ; ended up with two orange gauntlet-fulls of Kryptonian secondary sexual characteristics. Kara caught the camera just over the fire bathed cloud _floor_. Her brain registered her passenger's extra _clinginess_ , and she returned to a much more sedate flight path. Barbara raised her head from the smooth curve of back, the curve of her faceplate mirroring the golden light of a sun half submerged in mist. She looked over her shoulder at the swirled turbulence of their passage over a tiny portion of a an otherwise calm immensity of cloud ; she whooped with delight. 

Kara looked over her shoulder with a look meant to be reproachful, but, at the sight of her transported transport, couldn’t help but change into one of almost equal delight. 

"Hands!" She didn't sound too put out, and Barbara really couldn't feel anything with her hands covered by layers of 'Seventies space age materials. It didn't keep her from blushing, but it didn't keep her from giving her handfuls a lascivious NASA squeeze.

"I think we've invented a new fetish!"

Their shared laughter was abruptly interrupted by the cigar of an airliner that suddenly crested the cloud ceiling scant meters from the women. Faces goggled at them from portholes at the surprised, slightly indelicate couple. Kara waved at the rapidly receding bulk of the Air Metropolis jet. Barbara was glad that she was unidentifiable within the orange spacesuit. 

Kara raised her voice just enough to be heard by her companion : “Should we give them more of a show?”

Barbara shook her head emphatically : “An astronaut groping Supergirl at eight thousand meters isn't enough?”

“Yeah, it'd be hard to top that!”

The orange astronaut riding atop the flying blonde exclaimed, “Well then, I _demand_ that we get on with the surprise!”

Kara grinned : “Milady, your _constant_ woman abides!” She began rising into a sky rapidly darkening to a royal blue as they approached the translation from atmosphere to space. The whistle of air ceased, and the milky way, previously obscured by biosphere, flared diamond dust across black velvet ; feeling the tracks of tears she could not wipe away, Barbara gasped in delight.

Kara retrieved a cell phone shaped device clamped to her belt, read the data display ; maneuvered their orbital position until they paralleled something that hadn’t been in Earth orbit before the previous morning : the twenty five centimetre wide sphere was covered with with the fractal swirls of flash frozen precious metals. Barbara reached out a gauntlet, traced insulated fingers along the flawless seashell surface curve of rose gold.

Barbara raised her helmet’s outer reflective faceplate shield, mouthed, ‘Beautiful, but too heavy!”

Smiling, Kara nodded, touched her head to helmet ; said, “I wanted to show you your star _before_ it falls!”

She whisked a Barbara back to the ground who was far too busy holding on to ask her woman what she meant. 

It was twilight when Kara dropped her girlfriend off on the roof of her Gotham condo building. By that time, Barbara had an alarming idea just what it was Kara had in mind for her surprise present. She managed to blurt, “Kara, you can’t…” but the addressee was already arrowing high into the sky. “…it’s a bolide!2”

She waited anxiously as the horizon deepened from robin to royal blue, Venus shone low in the sky ; and then another star lit up the night, shadows where none had the right to be whirled insanely fast sundial tracks as the small sun traced flame across darkness.

It exploded. 

The flash and explosion woke Pamela. Groggily, she reached up, wove an arm ; the vines across the ceiling untangled and parted ; the flurry of dual beams of crimson skittering across the graceful death of a huge fire blossom brought her to full wakefulness. She wrinkled her brow, and a vine rose skywards the maw at its tip opening to pneumatically loft a golfball sized husk into the air. At apogee, over the fireworks, the shell cracked, and fell away to reveal the nearly incorporeal wisps of multiple airborne seeds. Most seared instantly within the crucible of flame and debris, but enough of them survived to transmit the situation to the central nervous system to which they were wirelessly connected ; one luckily adhered to the woman at the centre of the disturbance.

Supergirl, flying parallel to what was considerably larger and brighter than anything she was expecting, suddenly found herself sizzling fragments flying off of off what had been a central mass but was now an expanding cloud of projectiles. 

She thought that no one else was present to hear her surprised string of fearful ‘fucks!’ that was interrupted by an even more astonished, "Pamela? How?...Please!" as she sublimated not nearly enough of the falling fiery debris.

As Barbara watched the dramatic dance of red beams amidst the fireworks cascade of golden flame, the city came alive in its own flare of electrical lighting.

"You're not going to get them all!", she cried out in alarm as if her lover could hear her across vast distance.

Abruptly, a volley of bright green tracers shot up from the island depot and arrowed in on the plunging particles. Barbara, correctly gauging the origin of the help, egged the green fire with raised arms : "I don't know how, but _GO Pam!_

A beautiful, complicated convergence of green streaks splashed across the glowing red arcs of falling rock and annihilated them in luminous yellow puffs just above the vulnerable glass and steel of Gotham's skyline. Barbara fell backwards onto the carpet of sedum : "Poison Ivy saving the city from Supergirl? Crazy!"

Kara thought a heartfelt if nonplussed 'Thanks!' at her essential helper, but Pamela, wiped by the enormity of energy expelled, was passed out ; all Kara sensed was a faint, distant sense of dreams and loneliness. '

Kara moued, 'Love really does make you _stupid_ ', she thought as she descended towards what was probably going to be a very angry girlfriend, not to mention a very angry city.

Still flat on her back, Barbara watched her woman descend towards the roof. She was relieved but she was also _angry_ : Kara should have known better than to endanger the city. She readied her vexation and then, touching down gently as a breath, an abashed Kara held out a palm sized glittering rock. 

Kara clumsily paraphrased a line from the beautifully scripted copy of the poem framed over the mantle in Barbara's Gotham apartment : "I didn't think _all_ Gotham was 'be'st born to see [ _this_ ] strange sight!' "3. 

The gift and the quote washed over Barbara with a synergistic rush of emotional and cogent completeness that didn't entirely keep her from admonishing her woman with, "In the morning, I'm going to be so mad at you!"

Barbara grabbed up her Kara, gave her a meteoric kiss. 

"Well at least I got the romantic part right!"

Eyes shining, Barbara laughed, kissed Kara again, threw her arms around her waist ; fondled lower, lower, lowest back. 

"You have no idea : I was almost done with _Donne_ until tonight!"

Kara knew she knew what that meant, but the things that Barbara was doing to her made rational thought _difficult_.

As the city continued to awaken around them, the couple sank groaning and clutching to the building's grass roof. 

Deep within the caress of slow-wave sleep, Pamela, still in bio-electromagnetic connection with Kara, had a dream. Barbara Gordon was between her thighs , but they weren't _her_ thighs, and it certainly wasn't her...a sleepgasm grasped her gently : climax flowers blossomed lazily, drifted red petals ; pollen and nectar gilded the bed sheets with powdery, gooey gold. Then Barbara's voice, short of breath yet astonished, blurted, "You have _two_ clitorises?"4

Suddenly awake, Pamela, glowing from what the wet, perfumed wreckage of her bed proclaimed to be a monster orgasm, had zero recollection of what must have been quite the dream.

She pouted, assuming the dream was of her far-flung Harleen : She grumbled, "Business and bikes!"

**********

1The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was a jet aircraft that could fly right to the edge of space ; as such, pilots wore flight suits that were basically spacesuits.

2 Kara’s read, understood and has contested the theme of the penultimate and ultimate stanzas of a poem Kara has framed in her Gotham apartment. 

Song

John Donne

Go and catch a falling star,  
    Get with child a mandrake root,  
Tell me where all past years are,  
    Or who cleft the devil's foot,  
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,  
Or to keep off envy's stinging,  
            And find  
            What wind  
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,  
    Things invisible to see,  
Ride ten thousand days and nights,  
    Till age snow white hairs on thee,  
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,  
All strange wonders that befell thee,  
            And swear,  
            No where  
Lives a woman true, and fair. 

If thou find'st one, let me know,  
    Such a pilgrimage were sweet;  
Yet do not, I would not go,  
    Though at next door we might meet;  
Though she were true, when you met her,  
And last, till you write your letter,  
            Yet she  
            Will be  
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

3 A meteoroid which explodes brilliantly in the atmosphere. (Wikipedia). Kara’s is smallish. 

http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/faqf/#1

4 There is a also a dual uterus for the two main stages of Kryptonian pregnancy : the three month development of zygote to first stage embryo in the primary uterus situated similarly to the human equivalent ; then the nine month development of embryo to foetus in the secondary uterus situated directly above. Unless I decide that cross species lesbian sex can induce pregnancy (Hmmmm!), I don't think that this anatomical aspect will rise above the footnote level. :P

  



	17. Broadcast Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara is bad at speeches ; Babs is good at bailing her out.
> 
> P.S.  
> It was going to be only a dream sequence, but what the heck!

Gotham Square was a madhouse. Police choppers and an airship chattered rotors and propellers, and the space in front of city hall was teeming with people ; all of them focussed on the woman standing in front of the cluster of microphones. Fairly certain that the crowd was going to pillory her when the truth of the incident came out, Kara addressed the crowd.

“Citizens of Gotham,” _Oh, Zod, I sound like a super villain,_ she thought. “Last night’s disturbance was a meteor, and…” _Here we go!_ “I was responsible.” 

There was a beat of shocked silence broken by, “For saving us, you mean don’t you Supergirl?” That was from a adorably pig tailed little girl straddling her father’s shoulders. 

Kara gulped. "No, I"…She hunted for a normal word for an outlandish situation : ”dropped the meteor into the sky."

The little girl gasped ; the crowd joined her ; watching from the heights of City Hall's roof, Barbara sprang the contingency plan unknown to her about to be besieged alien girlfriend.

Batgirl dropped from the city heights, dramatically braked her fall next to Kara with glide wings. The crowd rocked back in surprise.

“She did it to show me how much she loves me!” Barbara swept Kara up, smooched her big time ; and the assembled population of Gotham lost their minds. The father of the pigtailed girl raised his hands over the eyes of his cheering daughter.

"Daddy, I'm not a kid!" She complained.

A sharp faced reporter at the front of the pack of flashing cameras and mobile devices called out, “Helen Raiser, Gotham Beacon : What about the green fireworks? Witnesses say they came from the old offshore oil refinery where it’s rumoured Poison Ivy’s taken up residence. Is this true?”

Wishing she possessed a neuralyzer, Kara answered with, “If by Poison Ivy you mean our good friend _Dr. Pamela Isley_ , the answer is…” She looked at a Barbara who answered her unspoken question with a nod. “Yes.” 

The crowd went nuts, and Barbara thought, Well, Pam, now it just isn’t the U.N. that knows you’re heroic : it’s _everyone_!

Kara’s thought was, _That’s it : Pam’s going to go back to being bad!_

****

"That's it!" Pamela bolted to her feet, the large bowl of popcorn spilling to the verdant floor ; and Harleen, who had been leaning up against her favourite flower, sprawled across the literal damask rose couch with a surprised squeal. 

"Try to do the right thing and..." Pam looked fit to burst.

Harleen rolled gracefully off of the chesterfield to her feet in one languorous catlike motion ; squashed up against the furiously rigid back of her spouse, and wrapped her arms about her.

"We're full on heroes now, Pamster!" She felt the tension ebb out of her favourite floral female fusion.

"I know, but life used to be so much simpler."

****

Surprisingly, the news that day was all theme and variations on meteoric hero love and heroic and sexy redeemed villainy. 

****

The mayor1 glared at the couple : “What possessed you…no, I know that already!” She reclined in her big, black leather captain’s chair, threw her hands up, scattering a sheathe of papers, and laughed.

“Next time settle for a bouquet or dinner out, please? The city can’t survive any more spontaneous super powered acts of affection!” She leant forward, the chair getting a workout, stuck her hand out. “Oh, and congratulations! You’re an adorable couple!” They each took the hand in turn, and then its owner ordered, “Now get the heck out of the city! Take a week! Two weeks! Now!”

They answered as one, “Yes Ma’am!” and scampered from the large office.

Her Honor smoothed her hair back, collected the scattered papers ; turned to look out of her window at the sprawling city below.

“Just another day running Gotham.” She said it with the smooth practice of a mantra.

******************

1 The worshipful mayor of Gotham City, Marion Grange as played by Carol Christine Hilaria Pounder.


	18. Hightailing & Hot tubs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, the family unit bestride their bikes! Also, it's time to replenish the naughty quotient of the story : Pam & Harl ; Kara & Babs. Triffy? Are you _mad_? Sher-sher's too young to mess around with anything but bikes, and drones! Not that type of _mess around_ : get your minds out of the gutter! :P

The family unit, nuclear and honorary extended, raced northwest along the white knuckle serenity of the Big Sur Pacific coast, California State Route 1. On the land side, the mini-Yosemite of Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park was a green-brown blur to the riders. In the lead, Pamela murmured along on the fast, electron charge of her curvaceous Henderson Excelsior Electric Streamline ; behind her in an arrow formation, four other bikes roared along with their own distinctive throaty exhausts. 

The firelight of the setting sun flaring ruby light off of the smoked lenses of her goggles, Triffy drove the curiously sheathed racing frame of a canary yellow Moto Guzzi V8. Next to her, cape and hair snapping in the wind, Kara whooped atop her completely unnecessary but very fun metallic red and blue Triumph Rocket III. Bringing up the rear of the formation, a goggled and helmeted Barbara rode her matte black Yamaha R1 next to the tight harlequin leathered Harleen astraddle what else but a classic red and black Harley Davidson JDH. Twilight revealed the presence of a secondary formation of vehicles.

Patterns of bright LED stars marked where each bike’s matched pair of outrider drones flew their guardian angel flanking tracks. As the darkness deepened and the motorcycles became shadows racing after the brilliant cones of their headlamps, the identity of each bike was clearly marked by the luminary drone colours that matched their attached vehicular colour schemes: Pamela’s glowed with solid emerald radiance, Triffy’s flashed canary yellow, Kara’s strobed crimson, Harleen's Xmas-ed twinkling green and red, and Barbara’s couldn’t be black light : she had had to settle for a slow blue pulse.

****

The evening star was joined by the wheel of the Milky Way as the body of bikes crossed the Bill Bixby1 Creek bridge, sped the rest of the sixteen kilometres to the most recent addition to H.A.V.E.N., the former Tickle Pink Inn2. The hightail3 of road machines eased into the circular driveway in front of the environment echoing cedar and pink granite facade of the _Spindrift Inn : H.A.V.E.N.._

Harleen eased into the frothing water of the hot tub, felt the rushing heat begin to seep into her saddle weary backside. Enriched and flushed by a dual consumption of a quantity of bath water purified through her epidermis and sparkling wine processed through her hybrid anatomy, Pamela waited for her lover’s entertainingly enthusiastic and near orgasmic dunking before she handed over the chilled champagne flute that she wasn’t sipping from.

An exciting bubbly froth danced against Harleen’s pale, perky chest, and Kara watched intently as nipples shockingly pink against pale flesh erected in their dainty areolae. 

She raised her moisture beaded glass, and picked an apt toast for her botanical better half : “May your root run deep!” 

Pamela raised her flute, matched the toast with, “To your fondest part of me!”

“Not _exactly_ what I was going for!” Harleen laughed as they clinked glasses ; Harleen messily tossed back the bubbly, pink froth spilling down her throat and over her upturned breasts. Pamela marvelled at the vivacious, thrilling woman opposite her ; scooted over into her welcoming, fizzily wet embrace. 

“Correction : I‘m fondest of _all_ of you!” 

She proved her point with a three way attack : her sinister fingers fondled breast, her dextrous cousins roamed to southern delta, and her mouth lapped and licked at the hollow of her emerald throat. Entranced, the glass slipped from Pamela’s grip to spill contents that in no way could match the biochemical delights of Harleen’s physical attentions. A pale finger teased over orchidaceous clitoris at the same time as her left nipple was playfully pinched, and the labial and tongue appreciations roved to the frond curvature of an earlobe : the heated liquid rush of orgasm crashed over Pamela with a breathy, pulse quickening cry of pleasure ; Harleen giggled in the flurry of Pamela's sexual ejecta.

"I love rose petals in my bath water!"

****

Prone on the mussed sheets, straddled by Kara kneading the sweat dabbled flesh in between her shoulder blades, Barbara breathed into the moist sheets,

"It's remarkable!"

"What is?" Kara squeezed a line of oil down the curve of spine, followed its path with gently questing fingers ; the massaged moaned in appreciation.

"How can you throw tanks and still be so gentle?"

She could hear the smile in Kara's reply : "Do you want the big secret?"

Barbara rolled over, her skin flushed, beaded with sweat. "It's self control, isn't it?" Her own little grin indicated the calculation of her posture.

"Self what?" Kara bent down, kissed a pouty nipple, trailed her tongue up over the heated flesh of extended throat, over chin to slip past pleasure parted lips. A string of saliva stretched between their mouths as, breathy from the kiss, Kara continued, “Throwing tanks is hard! I’ve got to concentrate on exerting exact strength not to tear them apart, but loving? Loving is easy : I don’t have to hold anything back!” She stretched her nakedness out along Barbara’s, slid her moistening vulva wetly against trembling inner thigh, groaned.

“Love draws from a different strength : one that will _never_ hurt you!”

Barbara drew her down until their noses were touching, their mouths were centimetres apart, a curious little crooked smile pulling up the corners of her mouth : “Effortless love?” 

Kara returned the slight smile with a great grin, “Eternal, inescapable, elemental!” 

“That sounds much more romantic than ‘effortless’!” Barbara ran her hands down Kara’s exciting flanks, grabbed a double handful of toned backside ; drew her lover in the spare space that separated their bodies from almost cohabiting the very same physical space.

****

In the next room over, Triffy happily and curvaceously dismantled the metallic insect insides of a aerial drone. Sher’s eyes, still metallic, were no longer quite as polygonal : the pupils were more rounded ; the blue irises around them were dappled with green. A sound emanated from her as she worked : it was a hum that warbled awkwardly yet happily and developed into a semblance of delighted laughter as Triffy successfully opened up the delicate workings of one of the drone’s dragonfly engines.

*********

1 I know that A) It's actually just the Bixby Creek bridge, and  
B) Hulk ain’t in the DCU  
But, I had to do it! There _simply_ was no choice. 

2 The Heroes Away Vacation Enclave Network serves two functions : insurance companies refuse to cover hotels that cater to heroes as they are collateral damage magnets, and heroes like to rest away from the limelight. 

The Tickle Pink Inn exists : https://www.ticklepinkinn.com

3My collective noun for a group of motorcycles.

  



	19. Topical Topiary Ties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course Ivy's lair has a topiary garden! Also, Triff's gifts grow : her minor one, intuitive reverse engineering ; her major one, being the lynchpin of a growing family of friends.

  


“How did I overlook this?” Lacie Liddell gawked at the garden of topiary animals that decorated the open area around the feminine curve of the depot’s pitcher plant swimming pool.

Pamela, standing with Harleen, Triffy and Picabo Radley on the pool’s deck, called out to the visitor to the island, “You hadn’t noticed it the first time you were here because it hadn’t been all cats back then!”

Running her hands over a leafy tiger crouched in long burnt grass, Lacie wandered through a garden of green big cats : a leopard draped its lazy pendulum of a vine tail from where it sprawled across the bough of a shrub-tree ; a verdant diorama of lions tore into the red Photinia ruin of a a gazelle corpse ; a pine needle cheetah was frozen in full speed dash, and another dozen other leafy depictions of felines dotted the landscape. 

“You did this for _me_?” There was a meticulous quality to the question which slowed its delivery as the speaker sought to insert intonation.

Picabo Radley’s raised and end crook-tipped cybernetic lynx tail puffed up, her cochlear implant cat ears pricked forward ; she hugged Harleen, planted a kiss on her cheek.

A Squished Harleen deadpanned, “I think they like it.”

She whirled a giggly Harleen about in dizzying circles.

"We _love_ it!"

Then, an actually giggling Triffy invaded the garden with a whirling swarm of tiny dragonfly-winged cat-bots, and a potent contrail scent of roses ; dumbstruck, sher parents and auntie Babs watched as the two fast friends whirled into a hug in the eye of a four legged Tinker Bell funnel cloud.

Pamela turned to her wilder half.

“Did our child just one up our friendship gesture?”

Harleen threw her hands up in surrender : “One upped? Sher ten upped us!”

Radley’s expression was a complex mixture of pique and pleasure at Triffy’s success with Lacie : the tail crook straightened, the ears swivelled slightly to the side ; and she murmured, “Family and perhaps a little more.”

Barbara laughed : “Oh, dear! I keep forgetting I'm not in Kansas!”

Kara threw her arms around her, drew her into a nose touching stare : "How? We're standing next to a pitcher plant that could swallow a jumbo jet1!"

"But I have it on good faith that it's vegetarian."

Kara went crosseyed : "That makes it _less_ weird?"

Babs kissed the tip of Kara's nose. "Nope! But I do feel safe..."

Kara pushed her in.

...swimming in it!" Babs splashed her Kara ; Kara returned the splash with an impressive cannonball into the pool.

Dressed in the oil and dirt streaked old jean cut-offs and t-shirt that she had been wearing while helping both with Harleen's gardening and Triffy's tinkering earlier that day, Barbara smirked at the super uniformed Kara. She pointed down into the bioluminescent depths at the colourful corkscrew swirl of _floribus pisces_ rising towards the bathers.

"Pam's goldfish are going to _love_ all that cotton we're wearing!"

"Vegetarian!" Kara squeaked, hovered wetly just above the surface of the pool just as the flower-fish swarm swirled about the water treading Babs. She reached a hand down to her woman : "Rescue?"

"Uh-uh! I brought a change!" The water about her began to froth, scraps of jeans and button down shirt dispersing into the flow and boil ; then the first fish brushed against Barbara's anus : her eyes widened in an amusing mix of pleasure and surprise. She threw both hands up, squeaked, "Rescue!" Kara plucked the wet, clothing tattered Barbara out of the pitcher pool, wrapped her in her cape. A flushed Babs gave her a reward kiss.

" _They_ didn't tell me that the goldfish are _perverts_!"

************

1 This is hyperbole : it couldn't swallow anything larger than a DC-6.

  
  



	20. Conventional Wisdom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An awesome motorcycle, a suspected ditch, KarBabs, and a whole new Wayne.

Chapter 20: Conventional Wisdom  
Summary:

An awesome motorcycle, a suspected ditch, and a whole new Wayne.

  
  


Triffy’s masterwork was an oddly beautiful beast. It crouched jet carbon fibre jaguar atop its slowly revolving plinth, one of many pedestal presentations at the Gotham Automotive & Technology Showcase housed within the Charles Foster Hughes1 room at the Riverfront Convention Centre. A svelte male model resting against the bike’s flank decorously hid a yawn as a feline stretch as he slowly revolved with his tiny piece of the overall show. 

“Who wrote this?” Harleen read the card puttied to the side of the pedestal : “It’s way too technical!” She fished a sparkly red glitter marker on a lanyard from out of her décolletage ; proceeded, with the cheers of a rapidly enlarging crowd, to dash off her loopy script across the surface of the pillar. While parading his lithe body around and across the bike, the cat-costumed chap stared a lazy feline stare at the vandal desecrating the base of his pedestal.

“Should you _even_ be…” 

“Shush, Kitten, I’m making you sixty-nine percent cooler!”

He couldn’t argue with the swelling selfie snapping swarm of spectators. In the dazzle of the limelight, he cat-preened for the audience. 

Finished, she capped the pen, slipped it back into its mammalian resting place ; blew a kiss to kitten, bowed to the audience ; went in search of her scattered family and friends. Cynosure2 cat waved a pink padded paw at the departure of his patron, and returned to the demanding task of being a glitzy kitty. 

Harleen found the Rubenesque pairing of Triffy Q Isley and Lacie Liddell moving through the display of consumer drone technologies with the awkwardness of two new friends resolving how to hang out together. Triffy darted out towards the largest display at the heart of the section, and Lacie began at the actual narrative start of the overall exhibit ; the former noticed the latter’s much more methodical method, and puffing a surprised scent of lime, she turned back to stand right next to Lacie, a little smile on her face, and a cranberry hint of rose perfuming the air around them. Harleen saw all, smelt all ; she thought, Oh oh, _love's_ in the air : What’s Picabo going to say?

****

As they ambled through the Green Tech portion of the showcase, Picabo was discussing exactly this with Pamela. 

“Lacie’s really taken with Triffy.”

Pam quirked a delicate vegetable eyebrow.

“How taken?”

Picabo sighed, wistfully : “Enough for me to think that maybe I’m no longer in a relationship!”

Pam threw a comforting arm sheathed in a spray-on toxin sealant around Picabo’s shoulders : “I’m pretty sure that their mutual passion isn’t romantic.”

“And neither was ours at first : we were just two nerds who shared catgirl and robotics interests on the animé forum, _AniMuse_. 

“What will you do if…”

Tears welled up in dark eyes, robotic cats ears rotated back, dropped ; faux tail lost it terminal crook : “Wish her well ; hope she’ll remain my friend.” 

Pam drew her into a hug : “Harleen’s right : you really are the best people!” 

****

The couple wandered amongst the rubber raptures and leather lusts of the adults only _Titillating Technology & Saucy Science_ exhibition(ist) space. 

Street clothes were even more amazing than super costumes : in her stone washed jeans and t-shirt bearing the blazing cracked egg _Alien_ movie poster, Kara was just a regular, striking blonde walking snugged up against the flank of a gorgeous, similarly garbed redhead whose t-shirt poster was _The Thing_ 's icebound parka. The height of hands across the backs of either woman indicated that one half of the couple was more sexually serene than the other. Kara’s wrist rested across the top swell of bottom, her hand gently gripping right buttock ; Barbara’s hand was content to stroke firmly against the small of Kara’s back. Both women were a little flushed, Barbra more than Kara, and the other assembled couples couldn’t help but sneak covert glances at the beguiling antics of a blonde and redhead whom seemed somehow more than just a very into each other couple.

Kara picked up a squeeze tube full of a gently glowing green gel, exclaimed, “Dr. Isley’s Philter? This can’t be legal, can it?”

A square jawed tux on the arm of acres and acres of exciting red dress answered her question in a pleasantly resonant voice.

“My BioTech and Pam…Dr. Isley ensure that it’s all of the passion minus the mind control!” 

Barbara started against Kara’s side at the sight of Bruce Wayne ; Wayne smiled, winningly.

Wayne’s date looked perplexed : it was probably a common expression, Babs thought, if she was the typical Wayne bimbo accessory. Wayne suavely repaired the situation with a round of introductions, “Sam, meet family ; Barbara and Kara, Samantha.”

Sam looked even more confused, “But I thought that…”

“Sometimes family finds you a second time, Sam!”

They engaged in outwardly friendly small talk while all but one of them wondered at the amazing roundabout way that a super villain romance had ended up creating the most unlikely extended family of all time. 

*********************

1 An industrialist tycoon (1895-1945) who made his home in Gotham atop his luxury hotel, The Xanadu. More on both in a later chapter. 

2 The centre of attention or admiration.

  



	21. Painted Tigers & Birthday Suits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feline face painting run amok.

It had started out as face painting. 

White makeup covered Picabo’s face except where her skin showed through to fabricate the jet mottling of a snow leopard hide. Lacie had meant to stop at the bottom of throat but the spectrum took hold ; she popped the top button of Lacie’s blouse, started applying makeup to the top of her cleavage. Lacie had seen the amount of makeup that her partner had brought for the process ; she suspected that it was going to be a full body-cat process even if Lacie was only waking up to the fact as she looked for permission to remove Radley’s bra.

Picabo took Lacie’s head gently in her hands, turned it in the direction of a Triff whose emotional composure had faded to a nearly androgynous mildly almond & lemony femininity. Her ‘ears’ were off in their charging port, her voice was further blurred ; and, releasing Lacie's head, she hand signed the same message. 

“We’re freaking Triff out, hon.”

“I want to show sher how to stroke you. Is that okay?” Lacie gestured to cheetah face-painted Triff with the white pigmented paintbrush ; the female characteristics of the barely female bare green girl filled in : hips swelled slightly, bust budded a bit as her metallic blue irises tracked the proffered implement. A whiff of daffodil accented with a hint of rose emanated from Triff as sher reached a svelte hand up, and deftly plucked the white daubed makeup brush from the plump blonde’s hand. 

Picabo’s response was, as it had been ever since her lover had started becoming fascinated with a certain plant-girl, complicated : a small flare of panic widened dark eyes in a body that was otherwise relaxed in the relief that its owner was not being thrown over for a more interesting person. Picabo’s signed & spoken response was : “You want to add sher to the _Joy_ 1?”

Lacie looked confused : “Don't you you mean : add sher to the _pride_?”

Picabo pulled Lacie in for a quick kiss ; received a scowl for a sloppy transposition of Lacie's tiger and Picabo's snow leopard.

“You know Alphas don't exist2.” She re-smooched her vexed woman : “ I’m willing ; lets see if sher is.”

They turned to a slightly more more feminine and daffodil-rose scented Triffy who was experimentally doodling a forearm up in an awkward yet amazing first attempt at green splotched snow leopard pelt. 

Lacie solemnly exclaimed, “Triff's practically already Cat People3!” She gently took Triffy’s brush hand ; led it and its owner to the partially completed canvas of Picabo Radley’s body. 

"Let's help sher finish turning4." The moist horsehair grazed the deep black skin just above the red cotton of Picabo’s bra ; she shivered at the cool contact, the clumsy smear of arctic white across her sable flesh drew an aroused little moan from mussed, pleasure parted snow leopard lips. 

The new artist, eyes wide and bright, kept filling out as sher filled in colouring as the older hand assisted by making more skin available. Brassiere joined blouse, followed by jeans and crimson bikini briefs. The de-clothed Picabo breathlessly declared, “Stop! I’ve…got to lie down!” Pantingly, she stretched out on a plastic covered floor which she finally realized was exactly large enough for her supine form. She was going to comment on that when Lacie joined Triff in painting ; Picabo was reduced to pleasured goo by the teasings of dual brushstrokes. 

The two voluptuous artists considered their finished, exhausted masterpiece with a shared, almost telepathic gravitas before Lacie removed the brush from Triff’s hand and bent in to brush her lips across sher’s. The entire room smelled like a rose garden in full bloom. She turned an inquisitive eye to the stretched out Radley 

Picabo ASL answered the silent question : “Sher’s a keeper!” ; and out loud, "As fun as that was, I don't think that we can birthday-cat-suit the Wayne Foundation Hallowe'en party."

****************

1 The author's collective noun for a lion-free relationship of lionesses. 

2 The nonfictional originator of the notion of the alpha male, L. David Mech wishes society would stop applying what he, and others, consider a deeply flawed concept. 

http://www.davemech.org/news.html

3 Cat People is a 1942 horror movie and is in no way any form of foreshadowing for this tail...tale : Lacie & Picabo know about it because it has to do with big cats.

4 A Werecat Infection seduction metaphor is not at all weird coming as it is from the woman with Aspergers who possesses a monomania is big cats in nature, entertainment, literature, etc....

  



	22. Not an Automaton, Bot Android*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *Read as : Not an Automaton, _but an-droid_. 
> 
> The Weimar Republic influences the Hallowe'en goals of an alien and her girlfriend.  
> 

  


Barbara scrutinized the creamy, thick paper invitation marked up with a gothic script that was one iota shy of being too arcane to be legible.

“Bruce Wayne, cordially invites, blah blah blah, Xanadu Hotel’s, Panorama Ballroom, blah, blah, night’s theme, The Roaring Twenties?” She cast a despairing look at Kara. “That’s fantastic. We have exactly two choices of costume : flapper, or gun moll!”

Kara, nonplussed, laughed: “A what and a who?”

Babs smooched her still rather otherworldly hon.

“A fun party girl or a dangerous party girl.” 

Kara nodded, shrewdly : “Sounds like we need to research something more interesting!”

Thirty minutes into a _Fine-Tooth 1_ search, Barbara declared, “But I don’t want to be a fashion designer, a famous author’s wife, a banana skirted broadway star, or a Spock hairdo actress2!”

“What about either a creepily beautiful robot or her cyborg mad-scientist lesbian lover?” 

It was Babs time to be the surprised half of the relationship : “What?” She tried to peek around the screen of Kara’s _WayneTech_ laptop. “You’re making that up!”

“Not entirely!”

Kara reversed the screen ; sure enough there was a black and white picture of a shock haired man with a raised, splayed black artificial hand ; behind him stood a stunningly eerie wobot.3

Barbara dropped the Gort-head throw cushion that she was about to bop her girlfriend’s head with.

“Is that from an old film?”

Kara clicked : “It’s a 1927 German movie, _Metropolis._ ”

“We need to stream it.”

“Agreed!” : Kara busied herself online. 

“Got it!” She synced her WayneTech laptop to her Lex Corp television4; they settled down to watch.

****

Barbara quipped, early on, “Gosh, Freder must think clean coal and clean labour runs daddy's town!”

Kara responded, “He has a magic garden full of dates : why would he care?”

Shortly after, at the first appearance of Maria and the mess of moppets, Babs exclaimed, “Good girl alert!” 

At the entrance of Rotwang, Barbara commented, “Now that’s a _mad_ scientist!” 

“But he lives in a magic cottage! What’s up with this movie?”

“It’s certainly _different!_ ”

Later, at the transformation of the machine-man to Maria’s likeness, Barbara and Kara were hooked.

Babs threw her hands up in frustration : "Damn it, Rotwang's turned her into a dangerous party girl!"

Kara laughed, kissed her exasperated girlfriend on the cheek ; said, "Not _our_ version : she'll only have optical sensors for her sweet inventor, me, Lady Rotwang!"

“Then, Femme Rotwang and Robot Maria _is_ what we'll be!”

Kara agreed : "Metropolis _is_ my city, after all!" Now, we should talk to Picabo and Lacie about fabricating a Robo…”

The phone rang the theremin opening to Howard Hawk’s, _The Thing From Another World_.

Barbara answered.

“Hi, Barb ; we have no idea what to do for costumes for Wayne’s party.”

Babs laughed, delightedly : “For the cost of one robot Maria costume, we’ll be happy to help!”

Picabo Radley’s voice sounded confused.

“What does that mean?”

“Come over to Kara’s place and we’ll happily explain!”

****************

1 Fine-Tooth is the premier Ultra-Geek search engine. 

2 Respectively : Coco Chanel, Zelda Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker, Louise Brooks

3 Not a spelling error : My invention designating a female gendered android. 

4 My Luthor’s no more or less psychotic than other great CEOs. Great means purely extraordinary : there is no inclusive positive moral component.

  



	23. Hallo'Wayne Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> B. Wayne's swanky retro Hallowe'en party.

  


The Panorama Room glittered a glass tiara atop the sleek seventy story art deco edifice of the Xanadu Hotel. A sickle moon glimmered down through its wrought iron and stained glass dome upon a costumed host mingling in an elaborately decorated and parquet floored ballroom. An eerily similar yet ethnically diverse assemblage of tuxedoed wait staff literally ghosted about the room, actual drinks and trays of canapés carried within the grip of Wayne Tech's _Project:Ariel._

Dressed in period leather flight suit, Bruce Wayne stood at the top of the dramatic sweep of the ballroom’s red and black onyx grand staircase. 

“Who’d let a little death get in the way of a great party? The lights died ; his entire ensemble glowed with spectral light as he began to walk down the centre of the stairs. 

Flanked by twin heroic angel statues at the base of the stairway, ghostly Wayne exclaimed, “Not this tycoon!”

The lights shone ; bearing a sabre in one hand and a sweating champagne bottle in the other, major-domo Alfred Pennysworth deftly sabred off the neck off of the bottle1 which he handed to the spectre with the dry exclamation, “Certainly not you, Mr. Hughes!” 

The Al Capone standing next to Salvador Dali Quinzel removed the ersatz cigar from his mouth, exclaimed, “Of course Wayne chose to be Charles Foster Hughes at the Xanadu!”

A Hemingway with his back to the typewriter set on the brass angel accented bar called out, “ He did die on October 30 just before his big Hallowe’en soiree…”

“Ninety two years ago to the day!" That was from the mouth of the golden robot holding hands with the shock haired and unkempt yet still quite fetching form of fraulein2 Kara Rotwang. 

A W.C. Fields added, "He crashed his airship into the Hindenburg before it could A-bomb Gotham!"

A Coco Chanel added, "Hughes' Huge!"

Wayne called out, “I may be dead, but tonight I intend to live it up! Cheers!” He raised the ceremoniously broken bottle.

The crowd returned the toast, drinks raised, quaffed. Pamela, dressed as Gala Dali, asked aloud, “Did Bruce Wayne just win Hallowe’en?” 

Salvador Quinzel mussed made-up mustachios by smooching ‘his’ ‘wife’. 

“For the next ninety two years!”

Everyone drank to that, as well. 

Then, three cat-themed characters, as stylishly late and natty as only cats can be, exited the elevator cage that sprouted gilt iron filigree in the centre of the ballroom underneath the skylight. 

In the lead, an impeccably, anachronistically garbed lynx-headed, tall dandy strolled into the suddenly stilled room. 

“My good Catsby, there’s exactly nothing more timely than being late for a party : being on time is unseemly ; being early is _unthinkable_!”

The tuxedoed and rotund tiger one step behind rejoined with, But what if it’s _your_ party, Wildecat?”

The third and final feline, all rundown black suit, cane, bowler hat, toothbrush moustache, large black bag, and strong scent of liquorice sauntered in after them, leaned the cane against the elevator cage ; rummaged in the bag ; held up a large intertitle3 card which read, ‘You don’t even want to show up for those : hosting’s all work and no fun!’

Oscar Picabo Wildecat winked at ‘his’ chum. 

“Charlie Chaplion _understands_ , my good feline! It would be a dreadful disservice to society to burden my wit with the thousand drudgeries of actually being _responsible_ for a party. So many bottles of _this_ and so many chafing dishes of _that_! Pshaw! I’m here for one reason and one reason only : to be _me_!” Picabo finished with a grand flourish at ‘his’ fantastic form. 

The crowd broke into applause.

****

“You’ve been _late_ to every party for quite some while, Oscar.”

Picabo accepted the champagne flute offered by the ghostly Wayne with a little cat grin, forward swivelled cat ears and a puff-pleased tail far too long to belong to an _actual_ lynx. 

Her lisp fit the anachronistic dandy image perfectly : “Social life is so much more important to me than _actual_ life!" 

With that, Picabo tossed off the contents of her glass ; filled immediately by the enormously entertained magnate. He raised his glass, offered a toast.

“To us party poltergeists : may we haunt only the very best soirees!”

They clinked glasses, downed chilled bubbly.

Lacie Catsby raised her ginger ale, formulated a counter toast toast that glittered all the more for the sharp edges of its precise, uninflected delivery: “Spirits for the spirited spirits.”

Chaplion raised an intertitle with one hand, raised her own glass of bubbly ; issued a puff of daffodil : ’Frightful health!’ 

They chuckled over that particular choice of words ; Triffy’s laughter sounded more relaxed and polished than when it had first been brought out by her attraction to Lacie Liddell three months earlier. 

“I know it’s gauche to bring up business at a party, but tonight I am the most plain-spoken billionaire of the Twentieth century.” He slipped a phosphorescent business card into Picabo’s paw ; saluted suavely as he left a Picabo stunned by the realization that Wayne had built some form of venture into his evening’s costume choice : the card glimmered the words,

Hughes’ World Engineering

WHitehall 1212  
by way of  
Wayne Enterprises  
(518) 613-1212

wayne’s@world.net

On the reverse of the card, written in masculine cursive was a message which made Picabo’s eyebrows soar : Family changes us both for the better, Catspaw. 

A thoughtful look on her feline face, Picabo extracted her time appropriate wallet from a vest pocket, carefully nested the card into the actual slot reserved for just such paper rectangles4. 

Both of the other mannishly garbed women considered her with the same question : held over her head, Triffy’s was a large white question mark on a black intertitle background ; much more awkwardly direct, Lacie fished for the vest bound wallet with a tiger striped hand which Picabo batted away. 

“He knows about Catspaw, Lace.” 

Lacie spit-took her ginger ale. 

In big, loopy Harleen Quinzel script, Triffy wrote in white marker across one of sher blank intertitle sheets ; held aloft : What’s cats paw? 

Picabo put an arm about the waist of the green third of her love life, drew sher in close.

“We _were_ criminals. We used our first catbot, Catspaw, to rob banks to fund our research.”

Triffy thought about Mom #2’s old plan to kill all mammals, and Mom #1’s crazed past ; she laughed aloud, reached out with her left hand ; dragged the wide-eyed Liddell into a three-way hug with her other oh-so-very _bad_ girlfriend. 

The band, Louis Armstrong and his Hot Apollo 11, decked out in snazzily sequinned nineteen twenties spacesuits, opened up with a little number their Satchmo introduced as _One small dance step_ ; the space around the central elevator was cleared for the host and his equally date, a equally spectral Amelia Earhart, to dance the first foxtrot. 

Pamela, who had planned to sit out the dancing, grabbed a surprised Dali by the hand and formed an early, only slightly indecorous second couple on the dance floor as the first dance was not quite done. No one complained : Pamela’s uncharacteristic zeal was disarming.

“I _can_ dance this!” She led Dali Quinn in a laughing sashay orbit around the lead couple. 

Protocol dashed, everyone else jumped the gun.

****

Halfway through the first dance, gold plated Barbara huffed, “I can’t dance in this thing! Time to dopplegang5 into evil Maria!”

Her mad scientist date exclaimed, “Wunderbar!” ‘his’ artificial hand clapped metallically against Robot Maria’s hindquarters : “This can I can’t…” 

“Give me a minute and I’ll turn that can’t into a can!” Barbara headed back to their table, collected a garment bag draped over the back of a chair ; disappeared into the powder room. 

Foxtrotting by with his phantom aviatrix, Bruce Hughes commented, “Barb’s changing out of character?” 

Kara winked at him.

“No, this change is true to the movie’s character…” She saw a rueful robot returning to the table ; continued, “if not Barbara’s.”

Babs draped the garment bag over the back of her chair. 

“I can’t do it, Kar : The costume's just too revealing!”

Kara laughed, picked up the bag ; pecked her woman on the cheek : “Come on, hon, time for a role reversal : you get to be _mad_ , I get to be _unclad_! Approve?”

Babs nodded vigorously : “Wholeheartedly!”

An entertained Wayne waved to the couple as they navigated their way towards their costumed settlement. Selena Earhart brushed his ear with her lips, whispered, “They’re super cute together!” 

“Cuter than us?” 

She purred in his ear, “Call this worldly cat _cute_ again and you’ll be sleeping in the belfry tonight!”

Wayne murmured into her ear, “The Bat extends his own wholehearted apology to his canny Cat!

“Much better, Bat!” The resulting kiss was intense. 

Seven minutes later, the sapphic couple returned, roles reversed ; exactly like her effect in _Metropolis_ False Maria-Kara had become the cynosure of the entire ballroom. Upon seeing her, Selena salaciously applauded.

“Want to trade dates, Barb?”

The addressed laid a mechanical hand upon the shoulder of the see-through gauze of her girlfriend’s cape : “She’s made by me for only for _me_!” 

Bruce injected, “Besides, it’d be too much like dating family!”

Selena Earhart sighed, grabbed her man ; returned to the dance floor with a resigned, “Guess I’m keeping you, Wayne.”

As he was dragged back to the foxtrot, Wayne saluted the couple.

****

At the far end from the tiara-apogee-ballroom, deep within the concrete bowels of the parking garage, the Xanadu’s new, Lothetic Intelligence6, _Eidolon_ , engaged wifi contact with the lazy figure eight flightpaths of twin emerald lit drones with one of its parking attendant drones.

"Excuse me, but please dock to your host vehicle."

The addressed drones hovered in surprise ; messaged their drone swarm.

Drones Ex.lsley : Statement : External system exotic coding protocol detected. 

Query : inquire? / Ignore? 

Drones Ro.Kara : Overture : Inquire re coding affinity/antipathy 

Intent : Request download for analysis & augment. 

Drones Gu.Trif : Statement : Unit consent. 

Drones Ya.Barb : Statement : Unit consent.

Caveat : Mitigate foreign system synthesis effects 

Drones Ha.Harl : Statement : Unit consent. 

Drones Ex.isley : Statement : Unit consent.

Aggregate : Initiating consent / dissent request w/ SystemXanadu.Ariel

The Ariel system, as strong and secure as it was, was unprepared to resist a true A.I. ; consent was given. The drone swarm linked to the hotel's computer, and downloaded what it did not yet possess : Ariel's capacity to mimic the emotional and behavioral aspects of human personality began to integrate into the self-aware but expressionless swarm syntax.

*****************

1 An actual ceremonial technique known as Sabrage. (Wikipedia) 

2 German : An unmarried woman.

3 Silent cinema included cards interspersed throughout a film to show key lines of dialogue. (Wikipedia)

4 Business cards existed in the 1890s!

5 dopplegang : (verb, mock German), The act of turning into an evil twin. Variant of _Doppelgänger_ (noun, German ) An evil lookalike.

6 L.I. is non self-aware A.I. : it is only the simulation of intelligence.

  



	24. Moan & Drone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story drones on, and in & out. Plus, impending plot!

  


“Hon, our motorcycle drones are getting it on.”

Seated at the central live oak desk in her study, Pam peered over the top of her book, a medieval tome of flora.

“Getting what on?”

In the doorway leading to the master bedchamber, Harley handsprung into the room, leapt onto the bookshelf ladder ; laughingly rode its oiled, bookish track to disembark at the halfway mark with a graceful backflip directly behind her seated lover. She leant in, whispered warmly into a finely formed emerald earlobe. 

“ _It!_ : relations, congress, nookie, bonking, whoopee, fucking…” 

Pamela force grew a palm leaf where her fingernails had been when she had been simply mammalian, plucked it ; placed it in the book that she carefully closed before swivelling her chair around to confront her acrobatic darling.

“Robots don’t…”

Harley grabbed her hand, whisked her from the room. 

****

“Fuck!” 

Harley wasn’t sure which was more amazing : the midair sight of one of her bike drones pronging Pam’s with its data probe, or Pam swearing. 

Three other drones, one from each of the other bike pairings, whirred into the master bedroom, traded what appeared to be a consent request/confirmation signal pulse of their respective body LED configurations ; joined in what could only be described as a daisy chain of…”

“Fucking drones!” Pamela laughed. “Why is it that everything this family creates ends up being so incredibly filthy?”

“Luck?” 

Pam gave her girl a gentle cuff with her right hand, and a firm butt squeeze with her left.

Their phones rang.

“That’ll be the others…”

“Wondering if we know…”

Pam put everyone on conference call.

“They’re here in a… _meeting_.” 

Harley snorted. 

The drones continued, housing lights pulsing and spasming as the interconnected formation drifted across the large space of the cathedral ceilinged bedroom.

Watching the aerial antics, Harley asked, “Are you as…?”

Pam’s squat, thick baobab crotch growth answered her question.

“Does this mean we’re _weird_?”

“Getting turned on by watching the mechanical spawn of our plant animal hybrid child getting it on in very own bedroom? No.” Pam said it so matter of factly as she led her lover from the chamber that Harley blew a sigh of relief.

“Phew, we’re still just good old regular folks! Now let’s go find a quiet little corner where I can climb your tree!” 

She moved her hand in the direction of the wood, looked to the owner ; received the shivery little anticipatory nod ; smeared the chocolate and coffee scented luminous pearl of pre-ejaculate over the yellow glans and down the red traceried shaft. 

Pam gasped, “We should wait, Ahh!, until we’re in…!”

Harley smirked, “…side? Don’t worry : you’ll be inside!” She slid down Pam’s body, swirled her tongue around the quivering tip of pseudo-penis ; groaning, the tiny vines that would shortly blossom with _flos climax 1_ blossoms writhed across her skin. Pam gently twitched her hips, and her grown-out orchid clitoris slid wetly, rousingly into Harley’s eager mouth. 

****

Even fifty meters away, Cheshire felt pheromonal stirrings in her lower belly as the raw chemistry of toxic love drifted its faintest traces towards her concealed perch high atop the island depot’s rusty pinnacle of radio mast to dribble liquor lapped up by whatever animal urge still existed within the taut mind and body of the lithe Vietnamese woman.

Slade did tell me that no one can ever _completely_ banish their humanity ; there’s what’s left of _mine_. The realization passed through her with the emotionally disconnected sterility of sociopathy. 

She slipped a small rebreather across her mouth, cleared her head ; waited for the coupling couple to be fully engaged before scuttling headfirst down the structure, and into the arboretum. She had a mission : a prescription to fill.

Medicine for murder was required, and Poison Ivy was to be incriminated. Few were better at this literal character assassination than the _actual_ assassin, Cheshire. She slipped into the arboretum, ghosted towards a specific place amongst the neatly arranged collection of ampoules and flasks which lined the arboretum’s walls. 

The vial Cheshire carefully removed to replace with a convincing dummy, under lit her face with sinister green light. She placed her goal in a custom built padded case which she slipped into a belt pouch of her signature optical camouflage suit. 

She felt the one voluntary pleasure left to her by her master : satisfaction at her successful completion of an undertaking. 

She slipped from the forest, escaped the island, swam to shore ; vanished into the city. 

****

Scented phosphor drizzled down the thick shaft, and streaked Harley’s wan fingers as she grasped the aroused convergence of grown out clitoris and wet, heated vulva as she slowly, teasingly lowered her own no longer entirely mammalian sex over Pamela’s drooling glans. 

Flat on her back, Pamela breathlessly noted the sexual alteration with pleasure darkened eyes.

“You’re more flowery…ahhhh! Pam’s clitoral glans slowly slid in and stretched out a vulva that had acquired the petal beginnings of a _Harley Hearts 2_ structured and coloured labia minora. 

“I Ahhhmm!” Gasping, Harley slid down the stem to the root, began to rotate her hips gently ; the combination of wet, sliding vulvas and broad penile penetration engaged both women in a lazily sweaty rhythm filled with breathy endearments and mounting groans of pleasure.

Pamela cried out, her body exploding with jasmine scented pollen ejecting Climax blossoms ; her hips bumping her erupting penis into the sudden ecstatic vaginal clamping of Harley’s own howling, flower spouting orgasm. 

****

“Labiaplasty.”

“Pardon?” 

Harley cuddled her head against an artificially high body temperature3 emerald breast.

“I had an operation to reduce the size of my petals.”

Pam mussed Harley’s damp, flower laced do with a slender green hand.

“Why’d you do that?”

“My man didn’t like my puffy hoohaw.”

“What does that joker know about pretty?" Pam ran her hair tousling fingertips lightly around the milky seashell of earlobe while her other hand, gently teasing figure eights across sweat dewed inner thighs, strayed across the fragrant flesh of vulvar flower ; Harleen extended her milky neck to look up into Pam's eyes, and shivered with pleasure at the sensations aroused within her by questing digits.

Exuding a lubricated spurt of pheromone excitant from the sweat gland analogues at the apex of her index digit, Pam slowly slid the finger into muscular liquid heat as she murmured, "I think it’s lovely!”

Harley trailed a come, petal and pollen spattered finger down to Pam’s fully feminine groin : “It thinks that you’re lovely too!” 

“And the rest of you?” She sighed with pleasure as fingers brushed across her labia.

“All of me is mad for all of you!” 

Pamela kissed the top of her head, used their favourite little happily macabre endearment : "You'll play with me for ever and ever?"

Harley slid a slim, pale index finger into Pam's heated orchidaceous core.

"And ever!"

*************

1 Flos Climax (Latin) Climax Flower : The small red poppy-like flower which only bloom across the the body of Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley aka Poison Ivy as one of her unique markers of orgasm.

2The variant of Clerodendron thomsoniae gifted to Harley by Pam all the way back in Chapter 2.

3Pamela alters aspects of her plant based metabolism to bring her sexuality into line with Harleen's _still_ almost entirely mammalian sexuality (Even without, they'd still have great sex.) : she raises her low plant body temperature, and induces perspiration to bring her bodily sexual responses in line with Harleen's. It turns out that both of these intensify the transmission and potency of Pam's _natural_ sexual charms.

  



	25. Mom's the Word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Each successive generation tends to be at least a little alien in the eyes of the one that precedes it : this is _super duper_ the case with Clan Isley! Also, it isn't sex pollen if the couple is canonical.

Each successive generation tends to be at least a little alien in the eyes of the one that precedes it : this is _super duper_ the case with Clan Isley!

  
  


The art deco revolving doors of the Xanadu whirled a pack of panicky and half dressed hotel guests onto the rain slicked, neon and streetlight splashed sidewalk. A distinguished looking gentleman wrapped in a hotel bathrobe grabbed the startled doorman by the lapels ; and, in a very undistinguished manner, shouted, “The hotel’s haunted! Haunted!”

****

Seated in a wing chair by the fire, interrupted book open spine downwards on his lap, Bruce Wayne raised an eyebrow at his manservant, Alfred Pennyworth. 

“An angry little girl poltergeist…”

“Searching for her ‘mommies.’” Alfred delivered this with a hint of sarcasm in his otherwise classic British self-possession. “That’s what the Xanadu’s General Manager says the guests are claiming, Master Bruce.”

Bruce raised his other eyebrow at his butler’s disdain : “But you think that’s…”

“Balderdash, sir. The ghost is your toy parlourmaid program.”

“But Ariel isn’t programmed to render rampaging little girls.” Wayne shut the book, returned it to the bookshelf ; clapped an arm around Alfred’s shoulder. “To the Bat Cave, old chum : we have a mystery to solve!”

****

Selena Kyle was having a hard time of it keeping a straight face as he passed the emerald paper wrapped gift to her significant other, Bruce Wayne, to present to the hastily clothed and sexily unkempt Pamela and Harleen. Even with her beau’s newly developed extra-strong anti-Pamromones, there's was something about Harleen's jungly sweaty sheen and Pamela's flowery and pollen daubed outfit that made her nipples erect distractingly against the cool, thin silk of her magenta gown ; and her hips twitch to the liquid heat kindled in her lower belly. She thought, Holy cats, that’s chemistry! 

She pressed her flank up against Wayne as she passed him the almost square meter bulk of obvious painting ; and he, observing her darkened eyes, and the exciting dual exclamations of aroused mammalian flesh wrapped in tight satin, not to mention his own sudden terrific hard-on, came to two diametrically opposed conclusions : he’d have to revisit the chemistry regarding his Pamela Isley defences, but only after he helped Selena work this dose out of their systems…rigorously! He loosened his tie almost unconsciously as he thought about it.

Wayne shook the cobwebs of desire from his head, and passed the painting to Pamela with a happy, “Congratulations!” 

The two women considered him with their signature expressions : Harleen’s was confused amusement ; Pam’s was droll forbearance. They had both come to know Wayne as a joker, and they both knew their super sexual effect on mere mortals.

Selena, still pressing up against her man, pulled apart the top three buttons of his dress shirt and micro undulated one thinly veiled upswept breast against the top of Wayne’s naked pecs as she amiably, if somewhat breathlessly, addressed Pam & Harl. 

“You’re grandparents!” 

Both of the addressed responded with exactly the same word with exactly the same intonation of shock : “What?” 

Wayne shivered in pleasure at the mixture of cool satin barely covering hard, hot nipple. He managed to keep his voice fairly level with, “Ahh, two weeks ago, your daughter’s drones seduced my hotel.”

Pamela brushed a spray of climax blossoms from her ‘hair’, “The Hallowe’en party?”

Selena rubbed her thighs up against the pleated, imposingly bulged front of his trousers. “Yes, the two systems got to talking and there was…”

Selena bent her head upwards and interrupted him with a kiss. The others waited : Pamela, calmly ; Harleen, impatiently.

“There was a what?”

Bruce swarmed his hands down Selena's back, cupped her high, firm buttocks ; drew her up for another buss before continuing a little more thickly, “They mixed and matched codes : the Xanadu was affective but not self-aware ; and the drones were self-aware but emotionally uninflected.”

At that exact moment, Harleen found that her professional psychological training dovetailed neatly with the emerging study of drone sexuality. She trailed a finger tip down the final curve of Pamela's stem-spine and into the shallows of the exciting cleft ; Pamela shivered in pleasure, a faint scent of jasmine rising off of her body. 

“That explains why the drone swarm’s been nothing but one giant daisy chain ever since!”

“What?”

Harleen kissed her confused lover.

"The drones discovered sex, and they bumped up the Xanadu! We better tell Triff : sher'll should be able to figure out how to collect our...digital grandkid before she...”

Bruce had his hands full, and most of his attention. “She wrecks my hotel? Yes, please!”

There was one thing that did not confuse Pamela Isley in the least : the other couple were two thin layers of silk away from full-on naughtiness.

“Would you two like a _more_ private place to…”

Having popped the final button off of Wayne’s shirt, Selena _hoorayed!_ , swept up her demonstrably horny boyfriend. In his gal's arms, he laughingly nodded

"Use the guest accommodations." She nodded her head towards a viny, verdant pergola1 newly grown for that thing that Pamela never thought to have : guests. "You're welcome to use the pitcher plant tub after I've done washing my dirty girl." She wrinkled her emerald nose.

He added a final addendum with a poor attempt at the sternness Batman could muster in the years before Selena's love.

"Pamela, if this ever gets out, _Batman!_ ” He won a light cat-cuff from his significant other, and a fond, "Mee- _ow!_ " as she carried her treasure to the indicated bower. Bruce waved bye-bye.

Pam carefully set the present down, and swept up her laughter squalling wife

Pamela remarked in wonder, "Who'd have thought?" She carried her giggly-wriggly wife over to the edge of the graceful curve of the enormous pool of the bio-phosphorescent pitcher plant ; heaved the shrieking Harleen on a cannonball trajectory. Mid-flight she happily yelled, "Ain't love..." she submerged with a pretty luminous splash before surfacing with a sputtering, "Grand!"

****

Within the semi privacy of the arbour, Selena lay her lover down on the springy greenery, and freed his impressive erection from his trousers.

"Batman lives up to his name!" She kissed the tip of the glans, swirled her tongue about the twitching helmet ; Wayne moaned, "Not the original intent..."

"You were cold, angry beefcake back then ; all you needed was me to warm you up." She gripped the base of his penis in between saliva wetted forefinger and thumb ; slowly worked them up as she slid the purple tip into her mouth.

"Was I _really_ that stiff?"

Selina withdrew, licking the veined length with the pointed, glistening tip of her tongue ; slipped out of her silk, and standing in nothing but a sheer black G-string, smirked at her prone, rampant man.

"Big and beautiful and boring as hell!" She removed her panties. Her vulva pouted a teardrop of clear fluid from within its closely trimmed delta of dark hair that extended viscously to form a spider silk strand in between their organs ; both bodies shivered as if the liquid bridge conducted pleasure. Then their genitals touched.

****

In the pool, the bathers heard the ecstatic cries of the other couple.

Pamela laughed. "They're really aroused!"

Harleen splashed her.

"Aroused? They're thornier than a rose garden!"

Pamela looked perplexed, but then she understood. She flung her green hands up in mock despair and sadly declared, "I get it! You've corrupted my fine, upstanding stem with your vile, vile mind!"

Treading water, Harleen kissed the tip of her spouse's viridescent nose, and proclaimed in her best southern belle voice voice, "Sugar, Ah ain't buy'n what you're sell'n!"

Pam linked the fingers of her upraised hands, brought them down behind Harleen's head ; drew her in for a far more satisfying kiss.

When they breathily broke the buss, Pam huskily said, "Rose gardens are _full_ of pricks and petals, ergo they are almost as thorny as us." She released her clasp of her lover to guide Harleen's left hand down to her crotch where the pitcher plant's _floribus pices_ were already daintily driving her mad with pleasure as they nibbled away the remnants of sexual activity from her erect stamen.

Also flower-fish grazed at her pollen, and ejaculate glazed orifices, a giddy Harleen gasped, "I'm too whet to swim!" gripped the twenty five centimetre long and ten wide shaft partly for pleasure, partly for preservation. Pamela leaned back in the water, altered her vegetable density ; floated to the surface with Harleen atop using her red traceried yellow stamen as a pommel. Giggling, Harleen whooped, "This is my favourite pool noodle!" She wrapped both hands around the shaft, and ice cream cone licked the warm tip ; a rivulet of aromatic fluid leaked from the meatus, ran down Pam's green, climax blossom developing thighs and into the water where its luminous liquid curls attracted a matching pattern of feeding flower fish.

Harleen looked up from her stamen ministrations, and breathily quipped, "Can you support a log ride?"

Pamela raised her head with a questioning glance just as Harleen attempted to scramble atop her ; she shrieked laughter as a surprised Pamela listed to port and Harleen pitched forwards into the water, scattering a school of floribus pices.

Righting herself on her back with an inner generation of a series of large air filled plant cells, Pamela laughed at the giggling, sputtering Harleen when she broke the surface of the pool.

" _Now_ I can! A little fore...

"skin?" Grinned Harleen, climbing atop the much more stable Pam ; arranging a vulva that was no longer anything like the surgically altered, svelte genitals that she used to possess : the new hybrid her lowered a stunning orchidaceous organ onto the tip of a stamen that the owner consciously shrank down to a mere twenty by five centimetres as it slowly sheathed within delightful liquid heat. 

"...warning!" Pamela gasped. "Forewarning!"

Orgasm exploded the water surrounding the lovers into a frothing feeding frenzy of floral fish.

****

Once they were finally, actually clean, and the other couple were, judging by the energetic splashing, not yet exactly _bathing_ in the pitcher plant pool ; Pamela unwrapped the gift. She laughed with delight at the sight of Georgia O'Keefe's _Two Calla Lilies on Pink 2_.

Harleen leered : "Look at those _stamens_!"

Pam leant the painting against an impromptu grown vine easel, and bopped her spouse on the head.

****

Riding the gilt iron cage elevator to the top floor of the Xanadu, Picabo, Lacie and Triffy conversed according to their various biological and furry-tech means. 

Lacie Liddell pouted, her cat tail tip swishing irritably. “I still think we should have brought our Ghostbuster outfits.”

Picabo’s cybernetic too-long lynx tail twitch was slightly slower, somewhere in between her one-third partner’s annoyance and the apprehensiveness of her other third’s elevator pervading lime aroma and thin womanly body. 

“I’d agree, If the ghost wasn’t an angry, lost child. _Our_ child!”

Triffy nodded vigorously, her anxious citrus smell overridden by a sudden spearmint exclamation and a slight plumping of her female feteatures. 

Lacie looked unconvinced. She found meeting new people horribly awkward, but she only saw this case as a technical issue. She complained in her uninflected voice, “What are you two talking about? Child! It’s a drone problem for me to fix!” 

As if to disagree with this purely practical analysis, the elevator doors opened onto a ballroom transformed from a real to a dreamworld space by sparking, intermittent lighting and the eerie echo of childish weeping intermingled with the thin keening of moonlight whitened wind whistling through a shattered glass and iron dome surmounting the ballroom.

Lacie's eyes widened. "Maybe it's a little more complicated?"

The triple3 stepped into a chamber littered with the ghostly glitter of shattered glass and the sputtered fireworks of sparking electrical systems and spasming lights. Picabo's cybernetic cat ears swivelled towards the graceful sweep of stairs leading up towards the wrought iron upper level circuiting the dance floor and allowing access outside to the rooftop observation deck of the Xanadu hotel.

"She's up there." Her voice broke with sudden urgent emotion. "We have to go _now_!" She grabbed a Triffy who's scent had shifted to an alarmed garlic at exactly the same time. They rushed towards the stairs as a flummoxed Liddell called out, "I'll be right here...to fix things."

At the top of the stairs, by the oversized french doors leading to the windswept night, a small luminous figure, under the whirling insect of a hotel drone and surrounded by the husks of a number of its battery dead kin, leant against the frosted glass of the doors and wept despairingly. There was a poignancy to the scene that overpowered Picabo's artificial cat attachments to address ; she felt the tracks of the tears running down her face as Triffy slipped her grasp towards the crouched and crying figure.

"Mommies are here, sweet pea!" Picabo found the words effortlessly and she wondered at her choice of plant endearments. She may be technological but her main mommy is _botanical_! 

The phosphorescent female form startled, looked up at the speaker and the slowly approaching form of Triffy ; wiped her eyes with small balled up fists.

"Are you _really_ my mommies?"

Triffy saw face that was hers but four years younger4, and she _knew_. She hugged the gravitational field parameters that defined the physical body of the young girl to her suddenly very female rose scented form ; the hugged cried happily into her mother's shoulder.

Picabo Radley was moved to tears at the sight of such an improbable reunion.

Below, Lacie Liddell called out, "What's going on up there?"

****

Lacie turned her Supadriv hex key in the screw hole of the Xanadu computer bank reserved for the effected aspect of the Ariel system ; the clear prism of crystalline memory slowly extended from the dual row of nested memory modules. She deftly unplugged the exposed memory medium and snugged it into a foam lined metal case.

"That's got it!"

Picabo corrected her gently with, "That's got _her_."

Triffy agreed with a strong maternal puff of sage. She held out her hands to receive the parcel that contained the essence of her progeny.

****************

1Pergola is the buck seventy-five word for arbour or arcade.

2 This painting is really in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

3 A stable relationship of three.

4 Triffy is _only_ a five year old animal vegetable fusion. 

  



	26. Hairs to Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Babs is into books, Kara's panties and Kara ; in that order. Also, enter Fancy, stage left.

  


It was the apartment of an ardent reader only a few book spines short of being bibliophilic. Kara grinned at the bookshelves that lined the entry hall.

“Am I going to find books in the kitchen cabinets?”

Barbara rolled her eyes, and countered with, “Cookbooks.”

“And in the loo?”

“Philosophy. Wait, did you actually say _loo_?”

Kara kissed the tip of Bab’s nose. “Sorry, I meant _water closet_!”

Babs returned the kiss upon the labile structure underneath Kara’s sniffer. 

“Someone’s been making rest stops around the world!”

The tiniest upward curl at the edge of her lips betrayed her otherwise solemn expression. “Even super gals have to pee.”

Barbara imagined a crossed legged flying Super Girl and giggled

“You can’t super hold it?”

It was time for Kara to roll her blue eyes.

“My urinary tract isn’t super powered, you know!”

Bab’s eyes darkened, and she husked, “And everything else down _there_? She tugged at Kara’s blue miniskirt revealing the exciting scarlet top of tanga panties.

“That’s what I meant when I said that…Hey!”

Babs had knelt in front of her to neatly sweep both the skirt and the underlying tanga down to Kara’s knees, and would have pounced had it not been for what Kara had done to her pubic patch.

“Do you like it? I was going to show you it in the _bedroom_ …and not your front hallway” The last bit didn’t sound very put out. 

Kara’s pubic hair was trimmed neatly into a blonde bat symbol just above the wetting vulva punctuated at the top by the swelling of vertex clitoris and at the bottom by the diminutive pink peek of the nadir clitoris. Barbara laughed breathily, the puff of her breath ruffling the short hairs of the downy bat-patch ; teasing a shivery pant and stomach flutter from the attached anatomy.

"I never thought that I'd be turned on by the bat symbol!" She wrapped her hands around Kara's hips and kissed the topiarian mons pubis ; Kara groaned, her major clitoris erecting to its full two and a half centimetre pink pearl.

Barbara released her butt grasp to shimmy out of her own shirt and pants to reveal flushed, upswept breasts and crotch dampened green boy shorts. Kara lazily grazed her fingers across herself as she watched Barbara strip.

Bab's dipped a hand into the top of her her panties, and murmured, "Do you know what's really great about it?"

Kara slipped a slick finger within her own feverish vagina, gasped, "Tell me!"

"It'll be an all natural redhead House of El!" She melodramatically whipped down her undershorts, kicked them across the hall to drape unceremoniously across a bust of D.H. Lawrence on top of a bookshelf. Her copper red American waxed triangle blazed against the softer flush of her thighs.

"I'll be the," She meant to say 'the judge of that', but by that time she already had a hot armful of very horny Barbara.

The doorbell jolted them apart.

Kara wasn't dressing fast enough not to be tickled by Bab's purposeful donning of the _wrong_ underwear. Clothed, if mussed, Kara opened the door just after the third ring.

"What the...?" Barbara, behind Kara, saw the metal and plastic filigree of a small drone hovering outside in the apartment building's hallway. An aperture whirred open on the spherical body of the device to reveal the insect curvature of a glowing lens to project a luminous little summer dressed girl not quite exactly like a much younger version of Triffy Q. Isley. The girl giggled at the women, "Hullo, Aunties!" It, _she_ , curtsied, a touch which fit nicely with the Scots lilt.

Barbara squeezed in next to her bewildered partner, crossed her slightly still flushed arms ; began sternly, "Fancy, you're far too young to..."

The projection registered surprise before vanishing, another giggle dropping into empty air just before an older, teen Fancy flounced a scandalously short clan MacDonald tartan miniskirt and belly revealing knotted blouse. That flummoxed Babs into an open mouthed stare much like the one still worn by the Kryptonian woman pressed next to her.

"There! Now I'm a teenager ; they're supposed to not listen to their parents and run off whenever they feel like it to visit their favourite aunties!"

Barbara's mind registered two things : Fancy's tartan pattern extended even to the wink of panty crotch, and far above it, there was the absence of a navel in the flat stomach. About the latter, she thought, _Why would there be?_ ; about the former, she found herself reacting much more like a parent than an aunt : primly.

"Young lady, it's called _under_ wear for a _reason_! Change into something decent this instant!"

There was a brief spark of defiance in jade eyes before the radiant adolescent vanished back into the body of the levitating drone.

That brought Kara back around. She grinned at Babs.

"Is the panty thief talking decency?"

Babs gave her The Look. "I'm not so perverted as to want to know what panties my _niece_ wears!"

A contrite Fancy reappeared in a knee length variant of her earlier outfit ; Barbara decided against saying anything about her top : she sensed that that would be going too far. Also, it allowed her to retain something of the definition of an aunt as being a less responsible form of parent.

"Is this long enough, Auntie?"

Kara quipped, "Alluring to Amish!"

Babs blushed. "Kara! Don't listen to her, Fancy!" She stepped out of the doorway, flashed a annoyed--but not very--laser beam gaze at her lover while gesturing the new niece into the apartment.

  



	27. Chimera Over for a Little Fun*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fancy's auntie visitation2 continues with a metric pun of wordplay. 
> 
> ********
> 
> * The Ch in chimera is pronounced as a hard K. 
> 
> 2 The arrival of an other-worldly guest : Fancy is kind of an electronic ghost guest!  
> 

  


The hard light construct of drone-niece sprawled comfortably in a red morocco leather armchair facing the couple occupied matching loveseat from across a coffee table decorated with a collection of Shaw plays bookended by small bronze busts of J. Caesar and Cleopatra.

The mind within the drone sphere tallied all of the physical markers of recent exertion displayed by the two women, and, in a flash of awareness, projected the rosy light of a blush across Fancy's projected face ; she shimmied her bottom to the edge of the chair.

"You two were _making out_!" Her smile was happy, her eyes rounded with wonder.

Both aunts were taken aback by the cheery candidness. Kara recovered first with a guffaw, a wink and an arm around the waist of a suddenly, fully blushed Babs.

"I see that we have _another_ detective in the family!"

Fancy leant forward a tad over the edge of her chair without Slipping, and whispered in an awed little voice to the aunt whom she had just learnt was the more forward of the two, "What's _it_ like?"

"It's _great_ , but we're," She pecked her flummoxed significant other on the crimson cheek, "a bit uncomfortable talking about it with our _kid_ niece!"

Fancy nodded with an understanding seemingly well beyond the years of her current luminal form. She vanished to reform as a thirty-something variant in tartan pantsuit.

"Tell grown-up me _everything!"_

Barbara salvaged her dignity with a laugh that while not as resolute as she would have liked was still utterly lacking in cruelty or mockery.

”We will, Fancy, once we think that you’re _actually_ old enough.” 

The answering lustrous pout was as minor as it was fleeting.

"I guess that I am growing up a trifle too fast!"

She Cheshire-catted back into the floating orb to reappear as the summer dressed child.

Kara winked at Fancy.

"Maybe just a..."She directed a confused look at Barbara. "Hey, Barb, what's a _trifle_?

Babs smacked her significant other on incredibly firm glutes, said deadpan, "It's just deserts1!"

Kara continued to look baffled.

You're punning your poor, clueless alien girlfriend _again_ , aren't you?"

The stabilized-muon quantum field effect of Fancy's drone projection hugged her confused aunt ; the feeling was like grasping a static organization of friendly bees.

"But she's really _innuendo_!"

It was Barbara's turn to look confused.

Fancy rolled her eyes, and explained her pun : "Into you! She's totally innuendo you!"

Kara made the motion of ruffling Fancy's hair ; Fancy, correctly gauging the gesture, simulated the intended effect. "Even I can tell that's a _terrible_ pun !"

Barbara chuckled. Fancy almost pouted, caught herself ; giggled.

"What about, she's totally _ingénue_?"

Babs made her very best impressed Keanu Reeves face. "Whoa, a pun within a factual statement!"

Kara rolled her eyes at the other two : "What's an ingénue?"

Babs smirked, parked a kiss on Kara's cheek : "I'm innuendo you, too!" 

Kara threw up her hands in melodramatic vexation.

"This is what I get for dating a librarian!"

Fancy grinned as she watched the blonde gather up the redhead for a kiss that was considerably more involved than a peck on a cheek.

A flushed Babs quenched the kiss that was threatening not to care if the visiting niece was old enough or not to witness a little, or a lot, of aunt on aunt action. She bushed hands away from dangerous heights on thigh and dangerous lows on back while breathily asking the guest, "Do your mothers know where you are?" Kara brushed red hair from over an earlobe moved in to nibble, Barbara pushed a laughing Kara away with a palm to the forehead. "I thought _we_ were uncomfortable..." 

"On this couch?" Kara interrupted.

Babs face palmed, and Fancy saw the chance to change the subject.

"It's a beautiful night! How about we go for a flig...walk?"

The two aunts traded a look, and Barbara voiced their shared realization, "You snuck out."

Embarrassed, Fancy flushed.

***********

1 A pun : A trifle is both a thing of little worth or worry and a dessert food ; just deserts is the retributive theory of justice of an eye for an eye.

  



	28. Hoverhood, Handiwork & Homicide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Triffy literally helicopter parents her daughter with a massive and very invasive drone search. Meanwhile a real crime is perpetrated. Helen Raiser, journalist, appears.

  


Straddling her racing Moto Guzzi V8 motorcycle, surrounded by packs of loping feline robots and squadrons of winged cat and quad-copter drones, a Triff reduced by anxiety to a thin, bitter copper scentrail1 sylph searched the city for her missing child. She turned her metallic eyes to the crimson coloured leader of the drone pack and issued its search parameter commands with a scent-coded exhalation that made sense only to the feline analogue scent sensors built into the sleek cheetah head assembly of the drone. It telegraphed confirmation with a single flash of its green photoreceptor eyes ; led its streamlined command of cyber-cats off to search the glass and steel canyons of downtown Gotham.

In the wake of the mass drone search, lights were blazing on ; over the Salem limestone gargoyle guarded Gotham Police tower, the Bat Signal flashed out to brand the underside of cloud roiled night sky.

****

Cheshire tailed the silver 1980 Chevrolet Corvette at a discrete five car distance in her own improperly flashy vehicle, a 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado. She thought, Even if I didn't have a contract to kill this _Eminence of Blades_ fool, that silver upholstery would demand his death! The only seats where that colour wasn't a capital crime against cool were in bumper cars. She was a cold and compassionless woman but that didn't mean that she couldn't be affronted by bad taste ; that sparkly upholstery was atrocious!

There was a sudden subtle shift in the overall pattern of her immediate environment : the surrounding traffic slowed twenty percent exactly as if a traffic incident had induced a rubbernecker event somewhere ahead of her current position. Almost automatically, the lithe Vietnamese woman took advantage of the cover of a locus of attention and shifted her car into an otherwise unsoundly aggressive surge. Pulling alongside the feminine curves of the Corvette, Jade levelled the custom made high-velocity pistol at her target just long enough for the target to realize that he was fucked ; she smiled, pulled the trigger : the toxin coated flechette silently arrowed through the open passenger-side window, through the closed window of the other car and into the temple of the man who would have given anything to look cooler than he did at his own death. The sports car drifted across a lane to be crushed impressively under the van of a WayneCorp eighteen-wheeler. Cheshire accelerated away from the seeming accident. She'd have to ditch the Toronado for awhile, but that was okay : she had a reconditioned BSA M20 motorbike coming to her in a week from the artisan hands of that motorcycle maven, Triff Quinzel Isley. Cheshire would not be lacking for a stylish ride.

****

The sun shone upon the silt laden waters of the Niger and the unnaturally fruitful three hectares of Sahara Desert from out of a sky bluer than the mind of God. Dressed in white lycra shorts, crop top, and _SeEden_ branded baseball cap, Picabo Radley was an Amazon goddess of Science. On the deck of the gently rocking river barge, she observed a computerized swarm map evolve into a locked configuration. 

Thanks to a year of wearing her cybernetic cat ears, Picabo Radley's contralto voice was more clearly defined and delineated as she spoke into the sleek high-impact casing of her WayneTech _Cypher _satellite phone.__

"That's got it, Cheets : I'm reading optimal microne2 dispersal! Send the recall code for the old drone warden-swarm." 

Ninety one meters away, on the palmy bank of the river, the stout figure dressed in a cheetah onesie retuned the signal with a raised thumb and the ASL sign for 'yes'. Clusters of clunky quad-copter drones lifted off in puffs of sand from around the perimeter of the large patch of crop enriched desert. They returned in ordered flights to their various storage crates situated about the barge's deck with the assistance of a squad of logo bedecked jumpsuited technicians.

Apropos of nothing, as she keyed in the command code to release the new microne swarm, Radley thought : should we not have left Triff alone to parent Fancy?

*****

An actually clothed Pamela led a cadre of journalists along an elevated metal pathway wending its way about the giant jungle trees of the Amazon. She stopped before a particularly large specimen, and turned to address her followers.

"How's this _Ceiba pentandra 3_ for old-growth?" 

"Impressive, but not really any more so than everything we've already seen." This was from the extra sweaty brunette from The Boston Blazon. Her compatriots, competitors really, nodded and murmured agreement.

Pam gestured to the tree and the jungle beyond it.

"Six months ago all of this was nothing but clearcut!"

The newspaper woman rolled her dark eyes--her press card necklace revealed her name, Helen Raiser--and declared, "That's an awful big sapling, Mz. Ivy!"

In an otherwise tranquil face, Pamela's eyes glared a fleeting spark of bioluminescent emerald anger.

With a sudden little grin of understanding, she turned to face the cotton safari-suited reporter. "You made quite the career for yourself writing about my old... _exploits_ , Raiser, didn't you?"

The brunette smirked. "I made you famous."

Pamela’s smile widened, and she addressed the rest of the press, all of whom had stepped back a few meters from the action.

"She means, of course, infamous." She laughed. "Your rag didn't send you to cover my project : they sent you to cover what I'm _really_ up to here!"

The smile turned to full, toothy-analogue grin, and Raiser wilted a bit in front of the fruitful emotional behaviour of a villain she had well known as being haughty, disdainful and emotionally low-key. She fought to keep her own smile solid but found it faltering.

She mumbled, "Something like that."

In the background, several of the other members of the press smiled. Raiser had an acerbic reputation, and many of them had been on the sharp end of her acidic tongue : it was nice to see her squirming.

Pam lowered her voice to a campy stage whisper. "If you must know, I'm perfecting a secret weapon for my honey-bunch!"

That really got everyone's extra attention ; the people in the back leant in, and even Raiser perked up.

Pam nodded portentously : "I've increased the potency of her desert fertilizer by _twenty-five_ percent!"

Someone swimming in the scribbler school said, "Shit."

" _Exactly!_ " She gestured at Raiser with a green hand. "Now can we get on with it before she dies of dehydration?"

Everyone including Raiser, albeit ruefully, had to laugh.

She offered a polymer sheathed hand to the reporter from the Gotham Beacon. "Linen would be a much better choice of fabric for this clime ; I can have a suit of it ready for you in half an hour, Helen."

Raiser accepted the hand. "Before I turn into the California Raisin reporter? Thanks!"

Pam thought, I've got people skills! Family did that!

****

Thirty three minutes later, Helen Raiser had her new suit. She looked at the ready-made garment tags, and raised an eyebrow at a Pamela. 

"What, you thought I'd have my vines weave you up a one-off? I've got a staff to clothe."

Raiser chuckled as she shucked off her sweat stained safari-suit for the much more stylish and cooler white linen skirt suit.

Her phone 'rang' with a jaunty song, "...you could be my new prescription / Too much could be an overdose..."4

"Excuse me." She put the phone to an emerald ear analogue. "Hello, honey, I'm in the mid... _What!?_ I'll be back as fast as I can!" A visibly shaken Pam brushed by Raiser, raced for the exit while instructing her phone, "Message Hana Kojo." The phone chirped ; Pam continued, "Family emergency, Hana : don't break _my_ jungle!" It was supposed to be the funny, light touch that she was learning, but in the rush of her worry, it came off more super-villain to alpha-minion. Then Dr. Pamela Isley was beyond Helen Raiser's powers of perception but far from beyond her powers of the forth estate. 

_And here I thought my girl was becoming a bore!_ Raiser retrieved her own mobile device and called her paper.

Her end of the conversation with her boss was, "He threatened Isley a couple of months ago!...Car accident?...Can you get Cooper to the inquest?... Great! If Phytotoxins show in the autopsy, we've got her!" Helen rang off, and went in search of her camera man and driver.

**************

1 A contrail of scent, and most certainly not the idiotic conspiracy theorist's _chemtrail_ .

2 A swarm of insect sized drones.

3 Latin : (noun) Kapok tree www.rainforest-alliance.org

4 The Neon Trees, _Everybody Talks_ , iTunes. 

  



	29. Mayor all of your problems be little ones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> KarBabs is once again in the presence of the mayor of Gotham.

  


The mayor looked relaxed as she considered the two standing women from the comfort of her oversized leather chair.

"Do you know why I'm not yelling at the two of you right now?"

Kara traded a look with Babs, ventured, "Nothing bad happened?"

A slight twitch pulled at the corner of the mayor's mouth, but she remained calm.

" _Dozens_ of those little mechanical whatnots--Babs elbowed Kara before the Kyrptonian could inject the proper name of the devices--tripped every bank and business alarm in the city in the span of twenty minutes." As she spoke, her hands grasped the ends of the chairs ornate wooden armrests. "We, Gordon and I, thought someone was robbing everything at once. So...nothing...bad...." She poured herself a glass of water from a sweating steel carafe on her desk, drank the tumbler down.

She fixed both women with a stare that would have been heat vision if only the boss of the city was possessed of super powers. "Why am I not reclassifying both of you as super villains like I'm considering doing with Poison...Isley?"

Kara made to speak again, but Babs interjected, "You know Pamela’s innocent!” 

Her Honor's right temple throbbed. "What I _know_ is that half of city council thinks differently, and it's going to take time to convince them otherwise : time I thought that I had for," Her outward demeanour slipped a bit, her hand clutching the empty glass as she bit off the final words with, "Actually. Running. Gotham."

Barbara grabbed her girlfriend's arm, and the grabbed allowed herself to be dragged from the mayor's presence. As they left the office, the mayor delivered a parting shot with an almost conversational, "Keep that niece and her _lovely_ daughter from emulating your past antics or...." 

The door shut behind them, something rebounded off of the inside with a muffled 'thunk!'.

Kara spread her hands. "Gosh, drop one meteor on the city..."

The mayor's secretary, a compact olive skinned woman in a skirt suit almost as crimson as her near brush cut hair, snickered at that as she fulfilled one of the less exciting aspects of her job, data entry.

Barbara smooch-interrupted Kara, and data entry went by the board as the executive assistant, chin in her hands, watched the breathy kiss and clutch with a dreamy little smile. Barbara brushed Kara's hands away from the pert swell of her costumed backside. "The secretary's _watching_! 

Dilated pupils in dark eyes regarded the kissers. Her voice was a pleased, slightly pleasure roughened, "Please don't mind me!" 

Kara winked at Barbara : "She's okay with it." 

"I feel like she's getting into my tights from across the room!" Barbara blushed, Kara chuckled, and the other woman laughed.

"If I wasn't already, watching that kiss would have made me gay!" She extended a slender, well manicured hand. "Carmine Cafaro, pleased to meet such a famous couple!"

Mollified, Barbara accepted the firm hand with a hand that was slightly sweaty within its glove.

Kara smirked. "What's it like working for Her Honour?"

Carmine stood up, her impressive six foot two height giving extra drama to her upward flung hands.

"Operatic!"

****

" _Mother_!" Fancy's petulant sixteen year old projection shone from a drone bereft of lift-blades.

An aggrieved looking and smelling--basil--Triffy ASL signed to her progeny an eloquent series of gestures.

"Grounded?! For how long?"

Triff spun out another hand-tale in concert with her perturbed expression and scent.

The drone projection shifted to a satisfied looking thirty-five Fancy that replied, “I can be an adult about this seeing as my mom has the very same sentence.”

Triffy had no other recourse at that point but to bark actual laughter accompanied by a basil displacing chuckle-puff of spearmint.

  



	30. Scions & Symptoms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wayne begets big news.

  


The penthouse apartment was very much like its owner, Bruce Wayne observed : secretive yet open, theatrical on one level yet still oddly private. It was open concept with a central bedroom partioned from the rest of the space by a cube of glass that was perfectly balanced in between opacity and clarity. To anyone within the condo, the bedroom was only a slightly fogged theatre in the round1 Bruce found the overall effect alluring. He mused, I shouldn’t be surprised to discover that I’m a bit of an exhibitionist.

Laying next to Selena within the ice blue luminosity of glossy silk sheets and inner lit glass and brushed steel furniture, Bruce felt that something was up with Selena. The only way Wayne could describe it was, _annoyed glow_ : in his arms, her body radiated a rosy happiness that didn't extend to her mind.

She disentangled herself from him, turned on her side a sizeable distance from him on the kingsized bed ; regarded him cooly. 

"Remember Pam's pad four weeks ago?"

Bruce grinned. "I'm not likely ever going to forget!"

"Our kid is going to ensure that you never do."

 _That_ explains it! He thought. He probed : "You're upset that I...?"

Her eyes teared-up and crying she flung herself back into his embrace.

"Idiot!" She sobbed, and Wayne happily held on.

Stroking the hair of the woman he loved, a thought occurred to him : a criminal had wrenched him away from family ; criminals had nudged2 him back.

”Speaking of Pam, you don’t actually think she killed that Eminence guy, do you?”

Bruce frowned. ”They did share an...interesting recent history, but there is a factor that makes me question Pam’s involvement.”

It was Selena’s turn to frown.

”Just _one_ , in your mind? What is it?”

”The murder site was the Gotham Central turnpike : nothing but concrete and ashphalt for miles.” 

Selena’s green eyes widened : The last place Poison Ivy would arrange to be for anything!”

“Batman will be going over the forensic evidence tomorrow ; then we’ll know more.”

*************

1 Theatre in the round is a central stage surrounded by the audience.

2 Selena's nudging especially, Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more!Ni!

Ni!This is a Monty Python sub-footnote-note. And now it's time for something completely different : the footnote at the bottom of this fanfic will now explode. BAMF! 

  



	31. Sun Vamp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a naughty, naughty Hallowe'en for Kara & Babs chock-a-block with vampiric shout-outs. Holy smokes, my second Hallowe'en chapter just happens to be the 31st! (Going Full Shatner) "What an...AMAZING...coincidence!" (/Going Full Shatner)  
> 

  
Chapter 31: Sun Vamp  
Summary:

It's a naughty, naughty Hallowe'en for Kara & Babs chock-a-block with vampiric shout-outs. Holy smokes, my second Hallowe'en chapter just happens to be the 31st! (Going Full Shatner) "What an...AMAZING...coincidence!" (/Going Full Shatner)

  
  


An orange and black motorcycle suited Barbara Gordon entered her apartment, dropped her keys on a splay of paperbacks of B. Stoker, R. Laymon and R. Matheson1 on her front door table ; found herself staring at a nighty so gauzy as to be almost nonexistent hanging from the top of her open bedroom door. A note was pinned to the skirt that was as short as it was filmy. 

By midnight, be in nothing but this & bed!

K 

Barbara took the dream of clothing down, carried it into her sanctum sanctorum, where the next surprise greeted her : a collection of decidedly sexy movie posters adorned the room alongside her framed photographs and bookshelves. Two women undressed in outfits very much like the one she carried smiled out at her from the Spanish, _Las Amantes Vampires_ taped to her far wall ; over the bed _Lifeforce_ had two nude woman splayed across torpedo coffins fired from a gothic spaceship.

She turned to check the near wall ; sure enough another lurid poster greeted her : a nude, prone _Countess Dracula_ leered at her. Babs wafted the nightie, and watched as it ghosted down across her literary quotations bedecked bedclothes : gauze hid the start of the quote, "...I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house." 

Barbara chuckled at the aptness of that particular line. She checked her wristwatch : It was only 5:30. There was plenty of time to dine out and finish the final thirty pages of _The Stake_ before sexy vampire assignations. She shed the bike leathers to reveal the proper armour of the librarian, a tan pantsuit. This came off to reveal the improper body & mind of the naughty librarian : her trim body clad in a matching white bra and panty set covered in racy red Shakespearian quotations2. She retrieved neatly folded black jeans and a black t-shirt from her book-topped dresser ; dressed. The front of the shirt was lettered in white gothic script, _The Fall of the House of Usher_ under a stylized white mansion rent down the middle by a jagged black crack in between the crests of her pert breasts. She turned to her dresser mirror to undo her long and lustrous red braid in favour of a simple high ponytail. As she worked at her hair, the quotation on the back of her shirt shouted out Poe's worst nightmare.

We have put her

LIVING

in the

TOMB!3

She gave herself a once-over in the mirror, paused for a second to consider her taut backside. She waggled it ; its saucy reflection waggled back. She grinned over her shoulder at her cheeky self ; cracked, "An Alien stole my modesty!" She exited the bedroom, picked her book and keys off of the foyer table ; sashayed her lovely lack of reserve winningly into the hallway, down the stairs and out into the early evening candy & costume bustle of Halloween night in Gotham's Sandy Hook borough.

Westenra Avenue's4 art galleries, Italian restaurants, and family grocers were decorated with Hallowe'en monsters, hay bales & scarecrows. A winter tinged wind guttered the orange firelight of jack-o'-lanterns, and gusted dry linen mummy leaves around the costumed candy hunting ghouls who swarmed around Barbara on their candy hunt up and down Westenra's attendant residential streets. Barbara took solace in the fact that the bookstore-cum-restaurant, _Volumes & Victuals_, was close enough that her choice of spooky literary reference over body temperature wouldn't be too much of an issue ; indeed, goose pimples would only add to the overall Poe effect.

****

A couple of nine ounce glasses of _Fangria Sangria_ 5 and a bleu6 rib steak comfortably processing through the mechanics of her metabolism, a nude Barbara Gordon pulled the whiff of rayon that was the nightie over her head ; contemplated herself in the floor to ceiling mirror. If anything she felt more naked wearing with it on than off : the red and yellow sigil of her Supergirl pubic thatch showed through the gauze as did most of the rest of her. She felt a thrill of naughty anticipation ; the erect coral tips of her upturned breasts grazed enticingly against the cool material of the babydoll as she turned down the bed covers, and laid herself down. She checked her bedside table clock radio : the cool, blue digital display read, 11:30. She turned on her reading lamp, stacked her pillows ; started reading the ten final pages of _The Stake_ that she had failed to finish at dinner. At midnight two things happened : the ending of the novel surprised7 her almost as much as when the bedroom's french doors swept open, and a caped figure, surrounded by wind billowed curtains and swirling dry ice mist, lit gracefully to the floor by the foot of the bed.

Barbara, who hadn't expected anything _quite_ this melodramatic, yelped ; the book literally took flight, albeit a short parabolic one, to bounce off of Karacula's head as she raised her splayed fingered hands above her head, the enshrouding cape fell away to reveal a Vampirella swimsuit8 large enough in the bust to not rise up with the desired anatomy in the looming, vampiric pose. The fanged mouth parted, but before Kara could deliver her cheesy Draculogue9, Babs giggled. 

"Countess _Bustula_ , I presume?"

Kara looked down at her peekaboo chest, and her fangs fell out as she too began to titter.

Kara readopted her Bela Lugosi pose, swooped down to the bedside ; said in her best Dracula approximation--it was terrible-- "Tits my name!" as she bent her head over Barbara's diaphanously draped chest, her warm breath stiffening her slightly upswept pencil eraser nipple within its diminutive dime areola ; stirred a little moan into Barbara's laughter. Kara gently slipped her fingertips down trim, trembling tummy. Barbara lifted her bottom off the bed, curved into the stroke with a shivery exhalation ; Kara caught sight of the pubic House of El through the negligible fabric of the nightie. She squeed, lightly grasped the babydoll's skirt ; looked at Bab's for disrobing clearance ; it was given with an aroused eye roll.

Kara flipped up the hem ; went in for a close look. "It's fabulous! Who...never mind!" She breathed across the neatly trimmed hairs shaved in a red S ; Babs bit her lower lip, squirmed in pleasurable anguish. From between her thighs, she heard Kara's naughty, "Do you want to see _my_ Batcave?"

Barbara's brain went immediately to imagining Batman birthing every time he went forth from stately Wayne Manor to fight crime ; it was oddly hilarious, but she had another rather more pressing need. She wrapped her fingers in Kara's blonde locks ; pulled her mouth against the ardent smoulder at her groin with an urgent breathy laugh.

" _Grok_ 10 me first!"

Without knowing exactly what her girlfriend was talking about, but getting the _essential_ point, Kara managed a _muff_ led, "It can wait!" She kissed the neat little origami folds of Barbara's vulva, and flicked a hummingbird tongue tip into ardent pink flesh. Kara felt the press of trembly, lightly sweat dampened inner thighs against the sides of her head and heard the shivery sigh of her name as she gently splayed the lips of the labia with her fingertips ; began to lick in earnest. The reactions became more pronounced ; by the time Kara wrapped her lips about the pearl of clitoral nub, the woman attached to it climaxed noisily, sweatily, enthusiastically. 

****

The tips of her freed hair plastered to her damp shoulders and the tops of her dewy breasts, Barbara, kneeling in front of a standing Kara, worked the monokini down the blonde's body. As the scarlet crotch slid past mons pubis, Babs cooed at Kara's specifically trimmed pubic patch : a slightly raised black dyed bat rested against a close cropped oval of natural yellow. The bottommost bat-barb11 crossed over the edge of the blonde oval to taper off over the large pearl of Kara's apex clitoris.

"I'm as _batty_ for it as I am for the rest of you!" To prove this statement, she slid her slick body up over Kara, leaving a sheen of perspiration across her lover's torso ; began to nibble, kiss, and fondle her way down from the crown of Kara's tousled head. By the time Babs reached the bat-logo, Kara was a quivering, quavering bundle of near-orgasmic endorphins ; Barbara locked her lips over the clitoral pearl.

Kara came.

**************

1 In order : Dracula, The Stake, I am Legend.

2 Shakespeare's full of naughtiness. For example, I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap... (Much Ado About Nothing). 

3 Poe's fear : As Khan puts it so eloquently in Star Trek 2, "Buried alive...buried alive!" The centred text is from his celebrated story, _The Fall of the House of Usher._

4 A Dracula allusion.

5 An actual wine from Vampire Vineyards, California. 

6 Extra rare, barely cooked meat. 

7 It really is quite the out of left field ending!

8 The red one-piece swimsuit is easily the most ridiculous thing ever worn by a creature of the night.

9 Silly Dracula speech : Listen to them, the children of the night! What [hokum] they make!

10 Robert Heinlein's nuanced concept of sympathetic and complete understanding of a concept or person as it is found in his novel, _Stranger in a Strange Land_. It's tenuous connection to the vampiric theme of this chapter is that it's very first definition in SSL is the act of drinking.

11 It isn't an actual barb as it is a straight point with no curvature at the tip ; I couldn't not call it after a shortened version of Barbara, could I?

  



	32. Bot to Trot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Technophile reporter meets autonomous hard-hologram drone, Fancy Xanadu. Sparks fly ; family deals.

  


It was a lilting, girlish voice. "You've reached the evil love lair of the now mostly respectable PamQuin : who may I say is about to interrupt their lovemaking?"

Seated within her egg chair replica of Number 2's throne1 and holding the slick, retro red phone receiver to the side of her head, Helen Raiser, sure that she had been ready for any contingency, was abruptly caught off guard.

"Uh," she said.

The voice mysteriously deepened as if the speaker had instantly aged ten years on the spot.

"That's an _odd_ name! Are you..." There was the briefest of pauses. "an early hominid?" There was a playful quality to the voice that Raiser found oddly fetching. She rallied with, "I'm Helen Raiser, reporter for the Gotham Beacon."

The voice altered further into a full smoky tones of adulthood with, "I've _heard_ of you, aunt2 basher! Helen held the receiver to her ear with fascinated intensity.

"But I haven't heard of _you_!"

The response galvanized the sharp featured reporter : "Me? I'm just a l'ill whirlybird drone lovechild. But you're _really_ not interested in me." The voice giggled in a register that had regressed back to girlishness before ringing off.

Helen Raiser placed the receiver back into the anachronistic clutch of its cradle, a resolute light burning in her eyes.

She spoke to her mini Rover3 bumping its white balloon body around her condo. 

"Boy, keep the place safe, I've got helicopters to catch!" She grabbed her coat and leave-in-a-moment's-notice job sling bag ; made for the door.

****

The drone projection of the tartan skirted, pigtailed redhead lofted her virtual rotary dial receiver in a Kubrick parody ; it morphed at apogee into an adorably fat little smartphone satellite studded with spiky antennae. 

Smooshed together in a becomingly tussled flush, terrycloth robed Pam and Harl entered the kitchen in time to see the phone icon vanish in a cartoon explosion labelled, ‘Sputnik!’4 above Fancy’s spider-legged drone sphere.

Harleen asked, “Who was that, Fance?”

The addressed drone's projection abruptly turned into a large tartan-diapered pale blue foetus enclosed within a floating bubble.

In Douglas Rain’s5 mellow tones, the baby said, “Goo?”

****

The Batbike carved a cold cone of headlight in the damp night as it tore through the shadows of downtown Gotham. Her ringtone caused Barbara to pull over to a neon splashed curb. She considered the text message and its associated GIF ; called up Kara.

“Kar, our niece’s confusing her grannies!”

High above Batgirl, on her _Fine-tooth_ NEar 6, Kara considered the foetal facsimile projected onto her cornea by the NEar's somewhat inelegant looking lens.

"That's the Star Child from the ending of 2001 : A Space Odyssey."

"So, is Fance being _Heidi_ ous7, or oblique?"

One klick up, Kara veered around a startled, honking vee of Canada Geese, her city scanning x-ray vision abruptly sliding over the section of street containing the speeding particle of Barbara's bike. "Little Mz. Internet's...Hey, can't you wait to steal them until after I worn them at least once?"

Barbara clamped her thighs to the side of her Yamaha R1's seat as if the act would somehow cover her butt from the god-gaze of her girlfriend. She discovered that she could still blush.

"Kar, can we please stick to looking for _Cheshire_?"

****

Pamela flashed a hopeful look at Harleen as she watched the giant blue bubbled baby slowly revolve upon its abnormal axis. She asked, "Do they know?"

Harleen laughed. "It sounds like Bat's too busy raiding Supe's underwear drawer for them to focus!"

Pam blushed. "I thought they were supposed to be pillars of the community!"

Harleen tossed her phone, grabbed up her astonished spouse for a full-fledged kiss ; after breaking the smooch, breathily remarked, "They're just like us : horny pillars!" 

The lair's 'doorbell' chimed, and Fancy Foetus popped out of existence as the glossy bot scuttled towards the island's dock with a enigmatic, "It's for me!"

The botanical half of the relationship quirked an eyebrow at the wan mammalian other half.

"Was Fance stringing us along until her caller arrived?"

The once psychologist nodded soberly, a giggle snuck its way into her response, "Is our niece _seeing_ someone?"

Pamela looked shocked. "But she's six months old!"

" That's probably about the right amount of time for teen-ELF-Fance to discover dating!"8

"But Fancy hasn't a body with which to date ; the other person would be dating a, what do you call them, a camera woman?"

Harleen pecked her far from worldly woman on the cheek. "Cam girl, honey ; and all three of her moms are gifted cyberneticists : a dateable bod build's probably already in the works."

****

Her paper's news chopper, and its long-suffering pilot, bobbing gently at its berth behind her, the slate-eyed Raiser quirked an angular eyebrow at the chihuahua sized spider robot that had been summoned by the ornate brass Green Man bell pull9 set in the centre of the easily stepped around door at the land-end of the dock. 

”Why am I not looking at a whirlybird?”

The spider bobbed in what Raiser presumed to be an arachnid gesture ; was it a spider-shrug or an arthropod-apology? She’d never before communicated with anything having more than four legs.

The image of a tartan skirted and propeller beanie wearing teen-Fancy projected into the cool night air above the drone.

”I’ve been _grounded_.” Fancy removed the beanie, and tossed it ; it vanished out of projection range.

Raiser ran with it as if it was only one step shy of being completely obvious. "Oh, that explains _everything_. Who are you?"

The image of the girl fell back into an egg chair which appeared behind her ; crossed legs covered by a skirt just long enough not to slide too dangerously up the shining thighs as she smirkingly said, "The new Number 2."10

That got a chuckle from the reporter.

"And I suppose that you want _information_?"

Fancy simpered as she shook her head. "Nope! I've already been into your browser history." She wagged a finger at Raiser. "So many _naughty_ robots!"

Helen couldn't entirely tell where the threshold was in between embarrassment and arousal in the flush which spread across her face and down into the neckline of her button-down masculine shirt. "So you're after _me_?"

"Ding, ding, ding! I've decided that I _really_ like you, and I'm pretty sure, given all of the evidence, that you'll _really_ like me!" The chair and Fancy vanished in a flashbulb flare to be replaced by a helicopter drone with a _Gotham Beacon_ blazoned press pass in the brim of a porkpie hat atop it's central sphere, and a Contaflex Super B camera11 hanging by a strap.

"Also, I want to be a reporter!"

Helen wrinkled her brow, and ran an unpainted nailed hand under her angular chin. "I don't know if a drone can qualify..." Inside she was dee-light-ted! _So much for having to sweet talk her into the fourth estate!_

"With your help, this drone _will!_ " The bot skittered over next to Raiser, and the projection altered once again to the tartan skirted teen threw a virtual arm about Raiser's waist. "Come on! I wanna' show you off to my aunties : it'll make them loose their minds when they discover we're dating & working together!"

Helen laughed as she made sure to keep in step with her scuttling metallic date in order to preserve the illusion of the clasp. "The phrase that most comes to mind is, _Justifiable homicide!_ "

****************

1 Helen's really, _really_ into esoteric and weird tech both modern and retro. For example, she loves the look of the British TV show, The Prisoner to the point that her condo is liberally peppered with recreations of items from the show.

2 Fancy pronounces aunt in the British style so there is no confusing it with 'ant'.

3 Rover is the weather balloon like guard dog thing that keeps No. 6 from escaping The Village in _The Prisoner_.

4 Russian (noun), Traveller : The first artificial satellite launched by Mother Russia on October 4, 1957.

5 The voice of HAL 9000 passed away November 11, 2018. RIP, HAL.

6 The hands-free phone of the Google-ish _Fine-Tooth_ company previously mentioned in chapter 22.

7 Heidious (adjective) Noxiously cute as in the children's novel, _Heidi_

8 Electronic Life Form.

9 The Green Man is a foliage face that, amongst other things, is a very old artistic representation of the Green Knight from Arthurian legend. A bell pull is an old form of doorbell.

10 A quote from the introductory sequence of the British TV show, _The Prisoner_ (1967).

11 A Zeiss-Ikon camera from 1959. Nothing sounds cooler than _Zeiss-Ikon!_ (Wikipedia) 

  



	33. Auntie Matter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pam doesn't think its niece how fast modern kids grow up.

  


The flowers that erupted across Pamela's body were unknown to Harleen. She didn't like the look of their sharp, jet black petals. She clamped a pale hand across her spouse's frown just in time to muffle a furious reply to their niece's announcement ; and then, reminding her that Pamela was capable of being uncanny, a new mouth formed in between the base of the throat and the top of her formidable cleavage. It managed, "Abso!..." before Harleen could stop it up with her other hand. The third mouth opened at the belly to finish the sentiment with, "...lutely not, young lady!" The eyes above the original orifice glared at Helen Raiser.

"At best you're after her to get at _me_ ; at worst, you're a crad..."

Harleen, having no more hands, resorted to throwing both arms around her incensed significant other and interrupting her with a kiss on the mouth situated under the emerald nose ; Helen and Fancy had the odd sight of two duplicate mouths puckering as they dwindled back into the bizarre body of Pamela Isley.

Fancy's shine1 winked at Helen, whispered out of the side of her luminous mouth, "It's amazing how such a hyper woman can have such a calming kiss. It's biochemical, I think : a hit off of Happy Harley."

Safely bundled within a pressurized hazmat2 suit, Helen Watched the fury flowers wither and fall from the foliage clothed Pamela; exclaimed in a filter muffled voice, " _Actual_ chemistry!"

Fancy ran a hand along her braid of flame red hair. "I'd need to be a real girl to say for certain, but all of my..."

Helen wrapped her left arm around the electromagnetic bee-swarm presence of Fancy's shine, pulled her close ; said _exactly_ the right thing to her.

"You're real to me!"

Bewitched, Fancy leant into the muon hug ; Pamela, in a similar condition in relation to her significant other, had little recourse but to observe of her niece's situation with a laconic, "Who am I to say?"

Fancy pulled away from Helen, wrapped her virtual arms about her aunts ; Helen Raiser no longer felt like she was about to rekindle the villainous impulses of a once ferocious supervillain.

Pamela regarded Helen with a relaxed, almost friendly expression ; she said conversationally, "Hurt her, and I'll turn you into a badly watered azalea."

Fancy snorted, but the journalist knew better : Helen Raiser wasn't certain that Pamela Isley, once known as Poison Ivy, couldn't follow through with the literal description of that punishment. She attempted to infuse her sardonic facial features and voice with as much sincerity as she could muster as she replied, "I'd be a terrible flower child." As soon as it was past her lips, she realized that even her sincere sounded sardonic ; Pamela's dry retort informed her that things were not exactly amicable neither were they hostile.

"Then it's for the best that you stay part of the animal kingdom."

"Yay!" Helen, Fancy and Harleen all said in unison.

"There is one other thing : that Eminence of Blades poisoning wasn't me."

The tall, angularly featured Raiser had been anticipating that very line of thought ; she airily announced, "Yeah, last week Batman forensic-ed the poison delivery to a dissolvable bullet : hardly the kill method of Poison Ivy. Besides," She winked, "you stand by clan no matter the plan!"

Harleen giggled, hugged Isley. "I like her!"

Pamela sighed, "Against my better judgement, so do I."

*************

1Any one of Fancy’s avatar projections.

2 Hazardous materials suit.


	34. wherehouse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An assassin cornered, a larger conspiracy, and a mention of another team.

An assassin cornered, a hint of larger conspiracy, and a mention of another team.

  
  


From the outside, the warehouse looked the same as every other structure on the waterfront : seedy and bland ; inside, however, the two women discovered that it was something else entirely.

Kara touched down gracefully next to Batgirl standing astride her black and silver Yamaha R-1.1

"Are you certain Cheshire's inside, Kar?"

Supergirl turned her sapphire gaze over the leather Batgirl outfit, and confidently replied, "As certain that you're wearing my underwear!"

Babs hands flew to her crotch. "Don't X-ray : it's..."

Kara chuckled. "Pervy? That's funny coming from an inveterate panty thief!" She shrugged. "I'll take them off you after we've corralled Cheshire." She held her hand out to a blushing Barbara. "Let's go get her!"

Barbara considered the vast, gloomy space of seemingly purposeless intermeshed cogs, and said, "Did we just walk into a Dada2 exhibit?"

Her partner asked, "Is that a kind of Earth art?"

Barbara was about to reply when another voice, calmly mocking, interjected from the shadows : "That's why you're a couple, Kryptonian : she provides the smarts ; you bring them." 

The eyes in the bat mask narrowed. "I thought the Titans had dealt with you, Slade!"

"Me beaten by teens?" The low-toned chuckle reverberated seemingly in time to the meshing of the chamber's meaningless gears. "Well, you do just have to smarter than your bruiser bestie."

A tiny bit of irk poking through her toothy grin, Kara retorted. "Smarter than....

Resting a hand on her girlfriend’s shoulder, Barbara dryly disclosed, “He’s an adept at unbalancing opponents with insult.”

”Thanks, but who needs mastery with you two?”

Barbara looked affronted, but before she could say anything, Slade cut to the chase : "You can't have Cheshire. She's mine."

From the whirring, clanking shadows came a defiant, albeit emotionally flat, "I am _mine_ ," A crouched female figure rode out on a large horizontal cogwheel. "and mine alone." 

A weird spike of calm anger punctuated the disembodied voice.

"Ego, Jade? Disappointing."

The interior of the warehouse was abruptly lit with demoniacal fire as the ridden cog exploded. Kara threw her arms about her girlfriend ; leapt into the air, and punched through the ceiling of the warehouse just before the surrounding intermeshed wheels exploded. Barbara felt a rush of uncomfortably hot air as Kara carried her aloft above the warehouse that was now more fire than structure.

****

The enormous, shadowed space was the near twin of the one that had explosively ceased to exist. Within it, the red and orange suited Slade stood before the beetle green clad form of Cheshire.

"They're both far too intelligent to be fooled by this little snatch of fiction for long." The figure spoke from his favoured position, amidst the shadows of his actual lair. "Now, why shouldn't I be done with you?" 

The green armour clad woman smiled--it was as bereft of joy as a scowl--as she placed a hand upon the black and orange carapace of his chest armour ; slid her fingers down to his belt. 

The masked male intoned, "Sex is meaningless to both of us, Cheshire, except..." He sprang back just out of range of the stiletto blade that had suddenly appeared in the caressing hand."

She matter of factly said, "As a way to _ensure_ proximity to the kill"

Slade stepped back into full shadow ; his chuckle filtered out of the darkness.

"Well played, Jade.” A squad of Slade patterned robots dropped from the darkness above to surround the Vietnamese assassin. “I’ve decided to keep you around.”

Cheshire lowered and locked her stylized cat grinned faceplate ; struck the fighting pose Slade recognized as the almost extinct Shangri-La martial art, Mutthi ra Khutta stance, _One Fighting the Flurry._ 3

Slade opened a hidden hatch that led down to a narrow garage housing his new, sleek electric T-Bike. He dropped down atop the motorcycle, and activated his mask microphone.

”A little practice will keep you sharp for the next time I require your skill set.” He gave the attack code for his Slade-bots ; powered the motorcycle out the snap opened iris apperture in the side of the warehouse. As he raced silently amongst the warren of rotting warehouses, Slade delivered a laconic satellite transmission, “Inform Minos, Talos dismantled.” 

****

Lit by the blaze below her, Kara systematically swept the wreckage with her gaze while, on the ground, Barbara called the firefighters.

"There's zero sign of Cheshire. Is it possible that she simply ceased to exist?"

Batgirl creased her bat-brow. "It was quite the explosion, but Cheshire cats are good at _disappearing_."

"You think she escaped _this_?" Kara landed in the midst of the flames, and collapsed a corner of the structure that was threatening to spread the fire to a neighbouring structure. An impressive spray of sparks rose into the night sky.

"I don't know enough about her to be able to categorically say."

A sooty, smouldering costumed Kara landed next to her, a contrail of ashes trailing her short flight. "What do you suggest we do?"

"We need to talk with the Teen Titans : they know both Slade and Cheshire much more than either of us."

**************

1 As established way back in Chapter 6.

2An early 20th Century artistic style that utilized mechanical imagery and other anti-artistic styles to convey the horrors of the dehumanizing effects of World War 1.

3 Nepalese for Fists & Feet. I just finished watching F. Capra’s Classic movie, _Lost Horizon_ and felt that there should be some snow-Fremen.

  



	35. Cede or Seed ?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An attack plan begins with small steps ; decisions must be made and implemented by the people responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Mali & Amazon projects.

Hana Kojo1 was as surprising as the project she was overseeing for her boss, Dr. Pamela Isley. She was possessed of an outré beauty by her Vitiligo2 : it leant an enigmatic puzzle-piece beauty to the high cheekbones and dark eyes of the tall, slender woman who considered the most recent stand of force grown new/old forest growth with an expression that quickly altered from surprise to alarm.

Every tree on the perimeter of the newest addition to the reclaimed forest was gouged halfway up the trunk by the blood red symbol, 桜.3

She ran into the grove ; and, to her horror, she discovered every tree had been so disfigured. The satellite phone trembled in her hands as she placed a call.

****

The pattern burned into the hectare of desert capable hybrid wheat, _Helios Feline_ , was impossible to decipher until the WayneTech _Argus GeoTech_ satellite was re-tasked from its survey of the Congo estuary to investigate the odd damage pattern to the Sahara Arable Farming Project.

Picabo Radley, Lacie Liddell and Triff Quinzel considered the satellite photography ; and Picabo, in her unemotive Intonation, said, “Someone’s attacking us where we live.”

Given that the burn pattern was a remarkably detailed picture of a wolf pouncing on a trio of kittens, Lacie and Triff had no recourse but to agree.

Picabo's robotic cat ears flattened, and her tail lowered and twitched. ”Some asshole’s calling the _Joy_ 4 out!”

Triff moved her metallic eyes over the eye-gaze communication interface-drone hovering in front of her ; an only slightly robotic voice asked, "But we haven't harassed anyone's assholes, have we?"

****

Two weeks later, the second set of incidents were subtler yet far more worrisome.

Coffee in hand, Hana Kojo booted her computer ; turned her office chair to shut out the morning sun slanting through the blinds. When she turned back to her computer, the screen wasn't her desktop aerial view of the fog shrouded jungle. A large red message blazed to the sound of a sinister minor chord.

Your trees will

FALL

桜

The mug slipped from Kojo's grasp, broke against the edge of the desk ; coffee cascaded onto the carpet. Around the shocked woman, every computer display in the PART headquarters abruptly displayed the ominous message.

****

Six thousand three hundred and thirty three kilometres to the north east, across the Atlantic and the equator ; three hours in the future, Kat Kabra’s5 graph of projected _Helios Feline_ crop yields was wiped from her computer screen by a message.

The wolf will

STRIKE

Λ

Kat glowered at the screen, looked over her shoulder at the diminutive Kanga Yaahl busily effecting repairs to a agricultural drone at the workbench across the airy room.

“Lambda’s back.”

”Let me guess: another threat?

”Nailed it in one.”

Her hair, only a trifle shorter than her overall 152.4 centimetre height, whipped winningly as she whirled around to face her sig other.

“Damn it, we’re a _humanitarian_ operation : guns & dogs aren’t our way!

The tall Indian woman spread her hands. ”If we don’t make them our way, we may soon have no way at all.”

”Gyáa 'láanuu!"6

Kat nodded, her dark eyes flashing.

”I’ll call the boss ; see what security we can wrangle up.”

Kanga ground her teeth in frustration, and growled, ”K'iiiiing!"7

****

"Hey Pam, watch what I can do!"

Harleen, garbed in the briefest botanical arrangement of Harley Hearts, backflipped into Pamela's office ; pulled a graceful vault over the seated Pamela to land butt first on the desk facing her only slightly perturbed spouse.

"Your ass is on my security report."

Harley winked. "You wanted it to be well seated, didn't you?"

Pamela chuckled through her face palm. "It does have to be _firm_. What's so important?"

"Watch!" Harleen wrinkled her nose, and her floral panties parted to reveal her pretty, and now well-petaled vulva.

Pamela leant in to get a closer look ; opined, "My favourite orchid!" She closed the final centimetre to kiss the bloom ; was interrupted by a sudden, gasping and twitching burst of her partner's clitoris into a thumb sized projection of quivering pink flesh. Caught cross-eyed at the glistening eruption a scant millimetre from her mouth, Pamela conceded, "That's new datum." She took the engorged organ into her mouth ; Harleen's planned, quirky response was reduced to a hip twitch, and a long, shivery groan.

****

There were two things that immediately struck Hana Kojo as being odd about the security memorandum from her direct boss : the twin perfect oval marks in its center ; the fact that the document was sheathed within plastic stamped with a discreet biohazard symbol. Given who she worked for, Hana would have normally taken the situation with equal measures of humour and seriousness as she pursued the contents of the missive. As it was, a little humour still crept into her summation of her instructions.

Filing the communiqué in her locked cabinet, the prettily puzzle pigmented Kojo moued as she murmured, "UAVs and laagers8 and guns, oh my."9 She unfolded the sleek, insectile casing of her Wayne Industries _Cypher_ satellite phone ; placed a call which was immediately received.

Keeping the distaste that was evident upon both her face and her body language out of her voice, the black & white woman spoke to the person on the other end of the heavily encrypted connection.

"It appears that we do need your services after all, Frau10 Wagnis." 

The voice which registered upon her aural sense had a quality to it which made it more comforting than the guttural, harsh sound of German. 

"Keine Sorge: Walküre kümmert sich um alles!"11

The translation protocol whispered the translation into the wireless earbud in the off-phone ear ; it answered the mystery : the message was phrased in oddly caring language.

****

********************

1 She was first mentioned back in chapter 28 as Pam's Amazon project's pinch hitter.

2 A condition in which there are sharply delineated patches of skin that have lost pigmentation.

3 桜 : Cherry blossoms.

4 The name Picabo Radley and Lacie Liddell invented for their relationship of lionesses back in chapter 21.

5 1/2 of the couple introduced as Harleen’s onsite project bosses of the Sahara seeding project (Way back in Chapter 15 : Barge in Africa)

6 Literally to swear in Haida.

7 K'ing : Haida for Fuck!...more or less.

8 UAV : Unmanned Aerial Drone. Laager : Circling the wagons against attack, or a dug in defensive position.

9Another allusion to _The Wizard of Oz_.

10 Frau (German) noun : Ms.

11 German : Do not worry: Valkyrie cares about everything


	36. Eggs Ova Hard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inter-species love causes weirdness.

There were attempts of colour—a flowering cactus in the corner, and a series of four bright abstract artworks—that only drew extra attention to the clinical sterility which permeated the facility like the bitter scent of antiseptic. Kara sat in a chair opposite the very Scandinavian head of the STAR Labs Xeno-Biology White Sands station, Dr. Hanna Hård. 

Dr. Hård pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose with a middle finger, exactly the sort of unintended gesture associated with the brilliant but socially awkward woman. 

“Not knowing anything about female Kryptonian physiology, it’s difficult for me to say just how far along you are ; but, I’d hazard no more than two to three weeks…of however long Kryptonians carry.”

Kara scowled at the lab coated blonde. “Far along? Carry? What are you talking about?”

“You’re pregnant.”

“But I’m a lesbian!”

“That didn’t stop your ova : they’re _intersex_.” The doctor leant forward rested her chin in her hand ; a speculative look lit her eyes. “I wonder if...”

An already astounded Kara interrupted with, "My eggs can go _sperm_? _How_?”

“There’s a terrestrial phenomenon called _Protogyny_ 1 : some life forms can spontaneously change sex to ensure a healthy sex ratio in their population. This appears to be a subtle variant of this bio-mechanism.”

“You think that I knocked Barbara on?!"

Hård corrected her, "Up ; and _yes_ , I think that it is likely that this is a _dual _pregnancy!”__

The bewildered mother-to-be ejaculated2, "But how did Barbara's _human_ eggs knock me...up?"

"Well, it's a known fact that, over time, couples harmonize aspects of their biologies ; I suspect a more radical variant of this is the causal factor."3

****

“Barbara, a sizeable percentage of the ova your body has been mass producing are... _noteworthy.”_ The speaker, Dr. Athena Grace, the head clinician of gynaecology, Gotham City Hospital, considered her patient with a calm face of professionalism that she distinctly did not actually feel.

Barbara moued. “What does noteworthy mean?”

”It means that I would like your permission to send a sample to STAR Labs.” Dr. Grace shrugged, “A year ago, I understood your reproductive tract ; _now_ there are aspects of it that have changed.” She considered Gordon with a caring look. “I suspect that the STI & sexual comparably tests we did with the assistance of the Fortress of Solitude’s database missed something regarding the _actual_ chemistry you share with Kara.”

Barbara’s eyebrows raised, and she leaned back in the warm pinks of the egg chair.

“What’s so different about me?”

The doctor’s face took on the neutral expression of complete professionalism.

“Your Skene’s Glands4 connect not only to your bladder but somehow now also to your ovaries.” 

Barbara’s face coloured a shade only slightly paler than the chair in which she sat. “Skene’s glands as in female ejaculation?”

”I presume since you’ve researched ejaculation, you’re experiencing it?”

The blush deepened as the redhead stammered, “For the...last couple of...months... _every time_!”

Athena allowed a gentle smile to break through her objective mien, “That’s why I want to include STAR Labs. I’m pretty sure it’s nothing bad, but it _does_ need looking into.”

Throwing her hands into the air, Barbara laughed, only a little uneasily.

”Love _really _does change you! Okay, doc, sample away.”__

__

__

****

Babs kissed Kara on the cheek as she came through the door.

"Kar, I think my doctor may be going insane."

The blonde giggled, took her redheaded girlfriend into her arms ; parked her blue eyes scant millimetres from Barbara's emeralds.

"Did she tell you that we're gametic hermaphrodites?”5

"What are you...?"

Kara interrupted her with a buss on surprised lips. "She's sane : _we're_ pregnant! Well, I am for certain ; we won't know for certain about you until STAR Labs can do a work-off of your lady parts."

It was time for Babs to surprise Kara : "Bits of me are already on the way to them...just not for _that_!"

"I was going to wait to do this, but _babies_!" Kara produced a blue satin pouch from a pocket of her jeans ; held it out to Barbara by its red cord. Taking the gift, a mystified Barbara guided her guest to a couch that had to cleared of a stack of books before the couple could be seated.

Barbara quipped, "Well, you've certainly bagged my attention!"

she pulled the drawstring ; opened the pouch. Inside, still warm from Kara's body, was a brooch with a copper red and yellow gold House of El sigil set against a green, blue and yellow tartan field. intertwined with a 'G' of inset emerald chips. On the bottom, in alternating forrest green and El red letters was an odd, old fashioned sounding word which seemed somehow familiar to the wide eyed Barbara ; then she understood, _completely_.

She ran a thumb lightly over the bright word, breathed, " _Bydand!_ 7" Looking directly into Kara's eyes, she clasped the heraldic device directly over her heart ; as if it were a preordained ritual, solemnly recited, "I, Barbara Donalda Gordon, do..." A ecstatic laugh interrupted her attempted gravitas as she threw herself into the strong arms of her girlfriend.

"If this was the marriage, we're going to have to redo it for family!"

Kara grinned before she smooched her woman. When she finally broke the kiss, she laughed, " I’m thinking this is the engagement!”

"Good! Mom and Dad'll need some sort of normal wedding given how weird everything’s becoming!”

"We can have the _Earthiest_ wedding!"

Barbara chuckled, and paraphrased one of her favourite books.

"I do not think that word means what you think it means!"8

The other nerd in the room understood the reference from the source of her geekiness, the filmic version of the written original ; looking suitably shocked, she exclaimed, “ _Conceivable!”_

Barbara laughed, leaned in for another kiss. 

“Nice _triple_ 9 entendre, hon!”

Kara dimpled. "Thanks! It's a benefit of hanging with a super language nerd."

Babs blushed prettily. "Are there any other benefits?"

Kara rubbed her chin. "Hmmm, let me think...

Barbara hit her with a throw pillow.

***********

1 Protogyny is an actual thing!

2 A second definition, largely extinct, of the word is : to shout, blurt out, exclaim loudly.

3 www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318571.php

4 Two ducts, one on either side of the urethra, perform a not entirely understood function ; seem to, in some women, sexually discharge a distilled bladder fluid which is distinctly not urine.

5 Gametic (adjective) Regarding ova. Hermaphrodite (obsolescent noun) Sharing qualities of both sexes ; intersex is current, proper word. In this case the author used the old, rude word because, to him, it sounds better than _Gametic Intersex_

6 Kara means _workup_. 

7 It is the old Scots motto of Clan Gordon ; it means steadfast & abiding. The phrase 'Bide and Fecht translates to the more aggressive message, _Stay and Fight_. Source : Clan Gordon - Wikipedia.

8 William Goldman's _The Princess Bride_

9 Indeed, there are three levels of meaning : 1) It’s a movie reference, 2) It’s a recognition, on Kara’s part, that she often screws up linguistically, and 3) It ties into the topical theme of pregnancy. 


	37. The Wyndham in the Willows Carrolls a Madcap Reel*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *Frankly, I have lost count of the enumerated entendres in this title : it is definitely a number of some kind or other. 
> 
> Triff goes on a madcap Mr. Toad, by way of Wonderland, motorized adventure. 
> 
> This may get me haunted by the thrice authorial spirits of John Wyndham, Kenneth Grahame & the Revd. Charles L. Dodgson. 
> 
> An alteration to be made : Slade's too serious for this fast fishing tail ; his mask will be replaced by a much more fitting hat (In this style, 10/6).

It was the most beautiful thing that Triff had ever set her metallic eyes upon. It shot past in such a dazzling whoosh of speed roiled air that sher lost control of her bike ; the occupants of the twin sidecars, one on either side of Triff's central machine1 called out in alarm : Picabo Radley with the light lisp of her technologically augmented hearing ; Lacie Liddell with the emotively neutral sounding intonations of Asperger syndrome. Triff's own scent-shout of surprised lemony-rose pleasure intermingled with the yells and the screech of swerving tires. The sidecars broke away to careen wildly off the road and into the willow banked stream running alongside the country way ; the bike and its emotionally plumping2 feminine rider toppled and skidded down the middle of the country way. 

When the watery, bedraggled passengers dragged themselves back to the road, they found Triffy staring off in the direction of the motorbike that had no need of anything so primitive as wheels. Sher made a noise as she sat staring : it was a very capable smell approximation of _‘whoosh, whoosh!’_ 2 managed with short, sharp bursts of puffed cheeked spearmint. 

As two thirds of the relationship watched, open mouthed, the now ecstatically curvy Triff jumped up, righted sher bike ; took off in pursuit of the other vehicle.

The short, heavyset blonde scratched her sodden hair, her robotic cat ears perking up in interest ; her similarly artificial tail swishing slowly back and forth. She considered her taller, slimmer companion whose own cybernetic cat ears & tail drooped, waterlogged and useless.

"Where's Triffy off to in such a hurry, Boo?"

Picabo plucked a limp leaf spear of _Typha latifolia_ 4 from Lacie's locks ; remarked, "What would you do if you saw a leopard?"

Lacie Liddell answered as if it were common knowledge to the two of them. "Chase it!"

Picabo Radley patted her on the head. "Exactly! Triff's off to make a catch!"

"Oh. How're we getting home, Boo?"

"I've got Supergirl on speed dial : we'll be fine!" _Also_ , she thought, _at least my military grade satellite phone is waterproof._ She prized it out of the back pocket of her drenched jeans ; placed a call.

****

As the world whipped by, a garlic tang of regret began to seep into the heady mind-scent5 of a rider who absorbed some of her feminine curvaceousness as sher continued the pursuit. It wasn't enough to make Triff return to her partners ; it was enough to make sher aware that her future apologies had better be damn good.

Then, ahead of her, she caught sight of the hover bike’s turbulent tail of dust roiled air ; Triff opened the throttle, and the thrill of pushing the machine to the utter limits of its capability streamed a powerful scent-trail of almost sexually excited strawberry into the atmosphere roiled by her passage. Slowly, surely, Triff began to catch up ; it never occurred to the faunal teen that it was by design : sher was too invested to have any insight.

****

The lanky, top hatted figure peered through a spyglass at the approach of the machines from his position concealed in a copse of trees next to the bright current of a stream. He said, as if to himself, with priggish glee, "Callooh! Callay! Lead sher straight on your crooked way, my little mad Hare!"

The voice that filtered back into his earbud, cocky and girlish, laughed.

"I _already_ know the plan, old man!"

The white gauntlets increased their grip ; the telescope lens cracked with what would have been a loud retort if it hadn't been for the roar of the passing motorbikes.

****

Her hair & hare ears blowing back in the wind, Harriet Pratt, her top half bent low over the front of her machine, her cotton tailed derrière jauntily thrust out in the rear ; drifted expertly into an on-ramp and into the mid afternoon weekend traffic of the Hudson County Highway. A smile of enjoyment was widened by the wind wrenching the corners of her mouth back as she dodged and weaved around and over SUVs & vans packed & tacked with the trappings of summer fun. Mistiming one overpass, the bottom rim of her rear lift-fan assembly clipped a roof mounted bike ; sent it spinning end over end to crash in the path of Triff’s Moto Guzzi as she sped along in between two extended van semitrailers.

The starboard6 docked drone messaged zirs7 port side match, "Sher's not good enough a driver..."

The companion drone finished the thought8 with, "...to not end up going under a truck's tyres!9"

The twin twin blisters on either side of the Guzzi’s green torpedo nose casing launched out and upwards to unfurl insect wings from under the the curved carapace giving the twin drones the glide time to deploy and power their intricate quad-copter mechanisms.

"Can we _even_ move that?"

"Together!"

Fully maneuverable, the brace of robots swept down upon the obstacle now almost under Triff’s front wheel ; grasped the bicycle each with a single front deployed manipulator, and with a whine of staining engines, cleared the wreck into the air. Triff roared centimetres under her mechanized rescuers, cleared sher tunnel of trucks ; continued the chase. Having deposited their cargo off the edge of the highway, the drones redocked with their mothership.

The March Hare watched the near miss in her rear view mirror with an abashed giggle, and a sulky, “It’s time to get over going over and get around to going around, old girl!”

The tinny voice of the Hatter squeaked in her earbud, ”I say, Hare : what’s up?”

”Nothing! Everything’s as _down_ as to business nearly down...umm _done_!”

The disembodied utterance didn’t sound entirely reassured with a slightly suspicious, “Have you heard any sirens yet? They’re what this whole show is about, you know?”

”It hasn’t even been five minutes yet, Maddy! Sirens only sing when they’re good & ready!”

In the distance, almost muted by the sound of speed, Pratt’s human ears detected the faint howl of approaching authority.

”The siren’s show is commencing! If I stage it right I can stage it left and exit this show in a hares-breadth.”

The insect squeak in her ear attempted to be heavyweight , a very weighty trick for such a diminutive sound.

” ‘Tis time to strike!”

The question laughed through the airwaves : ”Job action or jab action?”

”Jab, as in Jabberwocky : J-A-B!”

****

upon her floating bike, her top down and her bottom up, Pratt rejoined, “Or Jabber as in jobber!”

The exasperation seethed through the earpiece, “That’s _jibber!”_

“ ‘Tisn’t since this jobber’s on the jabber!” She wrinkled her nose, and her rabbit ears perked up ; swivelled in tandem to face towards the rear ; projected dual, blazing electrical arcs

which wreathed the targeted motorcycle and drones in flaring snakes of writhing, crackling lightning.

Not possessing a standard mammalian nervous system, Triff only felt the electrical attack as a shimmery light show, but the motorbike and its attached electronic outriders were not nearly so immune : the computer systems of both seized, overloaded by rogue electrons ; Triff, exuding an angry pungent basil tinged with a near panicky smoky scent, found sherself manually fighting to control a lobotomized bike as her brace of drones careened out of control off into the wilderness bordering the highway. The green fairing cracked as it caromed off of the rear corner of a sedan crammed with camping gear and a staring, open mouthed nuclear family ; car & cycle swerved, and the traffic around them scrambled desperately out of the way as the flaring roof lights of two sleek police interceptors howled into view.

The March Hare waggled her backside at the police who chose to pursue her, and toggled a conspicuously large switch next to throttle ; whooped in glee as the rocket assist positioned around the perimeter of the fan-blade assemblies shot her and her ride spectacularly beyond the reach of even the fastest law enforcement vehicle. 

****

The following day's news cycle was splashed across the Gotham Beacon's front page in suitably green ink : Famous Motor Cycle Whizz-kid Arrested.

The person reading the paper, his face hidden behind its unfolded newsprint, chuckled darkly as the shadows behind him clanked and spun with the seemingly purposeless mechanics of intermeshed gears.

To the surrounding darkness he spoke : "Reputation is such a _fragile_ commodity."

****

***************

1 The yellow Moto Guzzi V8 introduced back in chapter 18.

2 It isn’t always easy finding ways to convey Triff’s emotional sexual & weight markers. (Rage is skinny male : equanimity is average androgyne : joy is curvy female)

3 My crib of Mr. Toad’s Run-in (run-off?) with an automobile in _The Wind in the Willows_. Mr. Toad says of the passing of the car, “Poop, poop” which is his approximation of the noise of the engine ; this is why I repeat the _‘Whoosh!’_

4 Latin for the Common cattail, a plant always found in or near water. Source : Wikipedia.

5 Triffy also thinks in scent. She can use language with the assist of intertitle cards (Chapter 23 : Hallo'Wayne Night), American Sign Language (Chapter 21: Painted Tigers & Birthday Suits) or a text-to-speech device. (yet to be used in this narrative, _I think_. 

6 The left side of a ship, aircraft, and for this narrative's purposes, motorcycles.

7 Zir is a gender neutral pronoun in between his & hers. Other variants are : Hir, Eir, Vis, Tem & Eir. The author's word, _sher_ , is of his own invention. (source: https://blog.hubspot.com)

8 Triff's motorcycle drone fleet has successfully integrated the surface emotive qualities of the Xanadu Hotel's L.I. into zir system which was self aware but lacking in the ability to emotionally & socially communicate. The drones have yet to make this fact known to the non-drone members of Team Triff : they still interact to diagnostics as if they were their old mechanistic selves.

9 The British spelling of tire.

10 The _actual_ canon power of the DCU’s March Hare : shocking rabbit ears!


	38. A Fancy for Facts & Figures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen Raiser & Fancy Xanadu figure things & each other out!

The muon projection of the tartan suited, pork pie hatted—with a matching tartan hat band—twenty something Fancy projected from her drone which was hovering by the floor to ceiling window view of the nighttime constellation of downtown. Her shine held a pen & battered notepad in an only somewhat awkward quantum approximation of physicality. The pen, more or less in the grasp of her shine’s1 left hand, tapped against the notebook ; a list of three handwritten points scrawled across and a little over the edges of the actual notebook.

The other person in the darkened office lit only by Fancy’s presence commented upon the presentation.

”You’re getting better at fine motor, Fan!”

The hovering drone bobbed gently, the mechan-physic2 translation of the shine’s delighted little giggle as it bent in to plant a kiss on her partner’s laughing lips.

”You still kiss like a hive of busy bees, but with a little more...

The luminous Fancy kissed her again ; put a slightly higher electron charge into the proceedings ; Helen’s eyes darkened. 

She breathily said, “Did I say busy bees? I meant horny hornets!”

"Just you wait till my moms perfect my 33-S Replicant3 frame!"

Raiser winked salaciously at the technological spectre. "Only after the _cradle robber_ proviso gives out."

Fancy groused, "My folks think I'm still a kid!"

To distract her from the realities of protective parents, Raiser appealed to her partner's chosen profession.

"I think I'd like to hear what you've discovered, journalist!"

Fancy tried moue, but _really_ she was eager to share what she had learned with her love-fession partner. She opened the notebook to different page and tapped somewhat near it with her pen.

“First : So far I've confirmed the identities of three villains who have harassed our family in the last five years. In order of appearance, they’re : Livewire, Cheshire and very recently, March Hare. I suspect of these, the first is unconnected to any larger picture : Livewire likes to call her own shots far too much to work for others. Also, she’s too powerful to be anyone’s minion." 

"Second : Beyond the nominal connection of the names of the last two, neither of these individuals has ever been recorded as working together, but both have been known to contract out; ergo, I propose there are at least two other perpetrators : one is almost certainly the Mad Hatter, the known coconspirator of the Hare.”

“What makes you think that it isn’t just this Hatter?” 

“Nothing about the highway action against Triff suggests that it was a plan hatched by the Hatter : he’s all about mind control games ; this was a setup based upon the identification and manipulation of character foibles, namely Triff’s weakness for motorcycle innovation.”

Raiser rubbed her sharp chin. “And mind control doesn’t care about preexisting traits.”

The glowing girl nodded, her pleated braid of hair waggling prettily. “It doesn’t care : it’s a quick, brutal bludgeon where the other requires finesse and patience. The Mad Hatter, if he’s involved, isn’t the real problem.”

“You’re talking about _mastermind_.”

“Yup! That's my third point : Presumably the very same person responsible for our other familial problems.”

“The Amazon & Sahara attacks?”

“Don’t forget the murder of that U.N. security overseer with that super pretentious _Eminence of Blades_ name.”

“So it’s all part of a concentrated effort against our extended family? Why?”

The shine altered : the pork pie hat morphed into deer stalker cap, and the tartan skirt suit changed to tweed with trousers ; her face took on an a thin, aquiline chilliness from whose thin lipped mouth the curved stem of a calabash pipe stopped forming before it reached meerschaum bowl.

"Too elemental!" The face filled out into a strong dimpled chin under a slightly crooked nose and eyes lit with equal parts cynicism and warmth. The cap changed to fedora ; the tweedy suit to trench coat."

"Listen, sweetheart, only the poet and the audience need to know why Macbeth 'doth murder sleep'4 : I've no ambitions to loose any sleep worrying myself about motives."5

Helen smiled at the performance. “Sherlock to Spade6. Nice!”

Fancy reverted to her default tartan-togged teen, albeit in a skirt far enough up her shining thighs to make Helen wonder if Fancy's shine design was proper or improper enough to include some form of underwear. Fancy leant forward to steal another kiss, the skirt rose up further ; Helen had her answer : a rousing spring green & yellow tartan pair of panties plus the new, improved kiss-charge made Helen Raiser light-headed with desire for her outré girlfriend. She placed one hand on the back of the bee-shimmer of Fancy's redheaded top and the other on the likeminded muon-shiver of panty clad bottom. Fancy fabricated a happy little moan into Helen's mouth, pulled away ; a simulation of saliva bridging the brief gap in between their moist, parted lips.

Fancy exerted a positive quantum charge with her simulated hands pushing Raiser back into her office chair ; followed her down onto her lap, and breathily said, "I was going for Philip Marlowe, but Sam Spade'll have to do!" She amped up her EM kiss charge another iota and bussed her vocally appreciative partner.

Pulling away from the kiss, her protruded and upward curved tongue tip tingling delightfully, Helen thought, _And I thought black & white movies were boring! Yay, Bogart & Huston!"_7

“So, someone’s making a concerted effort to derail the philanthropic activities and business interests of the Fam?”8

Fancy the drone and Fancy the shine both swayed their CPU orbs side to side in the negation. 

“It’s more like a progressive stressing : so far there’s only been the one action taken against Triff, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, like the Sahara & Amazon projects, we’ll see a series of increasingly potent activities.”

Helen looked two parts duly impressed & one part bewildered. “And what does that portend?”

“There’s a chess master out there who’s dying to regale us with just how easily we’re all marched about his game board!” Lit Fancy raised an glowing index finger. “Why hunt for the motive when it will almost certainly be delivered, hopefully entertainingly, by the alpha pain in our collective asses!”

Between having the oddest & smartest technological girlfriend imaginable on her lap, and the journalistic thrill of recognizing a developing story, Helen Raiser was excited both professionally and carnally ; she addressed the former with a amazed, “Brilliant!” Followed immediately by her response for the latter.

Fancy did an admirable job of modelling the skirt lift as Helen’s hands ran up her shine’s thighs as her own 'hands' slid up under Helen's t-shirt to fondle the pert un-bra encumbered breasts which curved the shirt's caption, 

"It never got _weird enough_ for me."

Hunter S. Thompson9

She did a capable job of embodying her avatar with the visual, and tactile facsimiles of arousal : green eyes darkened with blown pupils, and a becoming flush across her throat and the peak of cleavage at the vee of her one-unbuttoned-beyond-chaste blouse. The emotions behind them, the same as those which filled her voice, however, were not artificial. Fancy's passionate delivery was a construction based upon how she actually felt about Helen Raider ; when she breathed, "When I can _actually_ feel you..." she actually felt.

Helen answered with a voice every bit as emotion choked as her digital dona's.10

"You'll embody everything I desire!"

That won her a lapful of zap-buss from her dronefriend, the full body tingle of which led to the triggering of her own bio-electrical over-surge. Fancy held on, her drone sensors recording the physical, aural and chemical markers of orgasm for future reference & utility.

*************

1 The general name of all of her hard-light avatars.

2 The physical & behavioural markers shared by the purely mechanical & projected biological aspects of Fancy Xanadu.

3 A mashup of the '90s _Bubblegum Crisis_ animé and the movie that heavily influenced it, _Blade Runner_. Helen Raiser's naughty robot fetish means that she's a fan of both, and she's the one who created the portmanteau designation for Fancy's future humanoid chassis. 

4 Will Shakespeare. Macbeth : Act 2, scene 2.

5 A change from consulting detective to noir private eye : Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes to Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.

6 Raiser’s guessed Sam Spade rather than Philip Marlowe : it was Fancy's use of ‘Sweetheart’ that did it as it’s usually associated with H. Bogart's sam Spade ala _The Maltese falcon_. One of the differences in between the two is that Spade doesn't do literary allusions. That's too fine a point for a Fancy who wants, with a lot of robotics help, to eventually get into Raiser's trousers.

7 _The Maltese Falcon_ (1941) based on the eponymous novel by Dashiell Hammett starred Humphrey Bogart and was directed by John Huston.

8 Informal noun for _fam_ ily.

9 Thompson, the inventor of Gonzo journalism, was something of an inspiration for Helen while she was in college.

10 dona (noun) Dated Australian for girlfriend. Alliteration achieves ascendency!


	39. Character Assignation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moms to be get around to discussing moving the mountain to Mohammed, but only after being playful, silly, sexy & hopefully cute. (In progress.)

The frost of a full moon flared cold light across the framed science fiction movie posters, figurines and movie memorabilia that decorated Kara's bedroom. The mussed bed contained two sleepers, one spooned against the back of the other. The red headed one to the rear bolted upright to reveal a mild baby bump 1, and a mons pubis decorated with a pubic topiary of the House of El Sigil2. To the patches of light and shadow that patch-worked the room, she declared, "We're doing it _all_ wrong!"

Next to her, under the bookish covers, Kara, facing away, mumbled, "I thought we were pretty damn great."

"Not us : Cheshire!"

Kara rolled onto her back, the sheets sliding down over sex-blushed breasts, a flat belly that belied her pregnancy3, and the top half of neatly trimmed Bat-symbol pubic patch. She sleepily smirked. "You want a threesome?" 

Barbara smothered her with a damp pillow ; exclaimed, "How can you even suggest _that_?"

From under the headrest, a muffled Kara managed a chuckling, "Just 'cause my cousin's squeaky clean doesn't mean..."

"You're all the pervert I can handle!" She proved her point by pinching Kara's pouty papillae. 

Kara's giggly shriek would have been louder if it wasn't for the pillow. 

"Ditto!" 

Laughing, Babs removed the pillow from her lover's face ; replaced it with her mouth. After she broke the buss, she smiled down at her lover ; quipped, "Also, isn't she too psychotic for our tastes?" 

"Let's see. Hmmmm!" Kara raised her arms, and moved her inward turned palms back and forth until they spanned a space of fifty percent of a metre. "Maybe just a eensy-weensy bit.”

Barbara clapped her hands before she placed both of them atop each of Kara’s Mammalian mounds ; stated in a pleased voice, ”It's good to know that we _half_ a metre of distance of decency!"

Blue eyes crossed slightly, and in between them the bridge of nose wrinkled winningly. "You're punning again, aren't you?"

The redhead fondling the blonde nodded sombrely ; sweetly intoned, 

"I measure out my wordplay

As a tyrant rules4, all the day. "

Kara's nose smoothed, her eyes uncrossed ; her hands tossed their moral approximation aside for a much more fundamental grasp of Bab's backside. "I've got the measure of you now! How's that?"

"I'd say I've been firmly _ass_ essed!"

Kara gently squeezed the two features of her girlfriend of which she was very fond : well toned, upswept, almost masculine buttocks were high on Kara's list of _All of the Sexy._.

Looking remarkably earnest for her double handful, Kara raised her blue eyes to Barb’s greens ; and inquired, “So how do we fix Cheshire?”

Barbara laughed at what she was pretty sure was an accidental arrangement of words.” “How do you _neuter_ lize her, you mean?” “Did I pun by accident?” Babs bent down, bussed her. “You double entendre-d : fix Cheshire can mean to remove the cat’s gonads.” Kara solemn expression cracked, and a wry smile warped crept across her mouth. “So, in this case ‘fix’ means ‘break’?”

Her turn to look serious, Babs nodded, and replied, “In the worst possible way!”

Kara groused, “I’m beginning to think that colloquial is synonymous with insane!”

“As the ambassador of the English language, I declare that you are exactly correct : English is mad!” She rewarded the insight with a kiss, and cuddle.

"As nice as this is," Kara shivered with pleasure as Bab's ran the tip of her tongue around the seashell curve of earlobe. "I think you should..." A wandering thumb brushed light circles against her against apex clitoris while a finger or two slowly, gently, insistingly made their way into the warm, wet welcome of vulvar vestibule and past into the twitching pressure of her nether vaginal passage ; her intent was content to wait until the rapidly cresting tsunami crashed violent delights through her sweat glistening body.

"What was I talking about?"

Barbara planted a kiss on the lower & higher lips of her spouse ; matter of factly said, “We're going to hire an assassin!"

Kara sputtered, “You want to kill Cheshire?!”

”No, silly! We’re going to have a third party hire her for a fictitious assassination job...”

Kara caught on. ”...and when she accepts it, we sweep in and catch the elusive cat ?”

“Until we discover just how difficult it’ll be to enact, that’s _exactly_ the plan!”

Kara clapped her hands, and gently pushed Barbara backwards onto the bed ; positioned her mouth just above the meticulously shaved House of El. 

”As soon as I’m finished, let’s start putting together our clever fake identities & assassination plot!” She exhaled softly ; the short hairs wavered ; Barbara’s voice quavered, “It can wait!”

The slightly more pointed than human tongue tongue point teased from the zenith to nadir of vulvar length.

****

Sitting back to back on the bed, the two women busied themselves at their respective laptops. Dawn blazed through gaps in the window blinds to tinge them, the scrunched up snowdrift of discarded ideas and the mountains in the swirl of bedclothes with miniature sunrise gold. Babs made a little trumpeting noise as she pressed the print key ; passed the paper extruded from behind the screen over her shoulder to her partner.

Kara skimmed the sheet, inquired, "What's geocaching?"

*****************

1She's two months along.

2Thatch symbol love goes back to Chapter 26, Hairs to Love.

3 Kryptonian reproductive biology includes a double womb structure. The first nine months, the zygote develops into the embryo within the complete umbilicus life support of the upper chamber ; the following nine, the foetus descends into the lower womb in which it begins to be acclimated to external environmental conditions prior to birth. Kara will only begin to show at four months ; it will be a small bump centred just under her breasts.

4Or, as a _ruler_ rules.


	40. Hallo'Wayne Night 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wayne's latest blowout Hallowe'en party has a surprise culmination. (In scary progress.)

Geistmann Castle rose turrets and the dark eyes of windows out of the mist as if it weren't anchored to the weathered granite of Dark Island. The procession of horse drawn landau carriages wreathed in the fog glow of their firelit lanterns, clattered across the cobblestoned bridge connecting island to mainland ; came to a halt around the driveway ringing a dry fountain featuring a chimera rampant1. The castle was dark and silent as each coachman, dressed in dark sinister livery, opened the well lit interiors of each carriage to emit the costumed riders into night air caressed by the icy claws of impending winter.

A Headless Horsewoman held her jack o' lantern cranium2\--it was carved as a skull--high above her headlessness to get a good look at the brooding and silent pile ; inquired of the opulently outfitted Red Death next to her, "Do we have the _correct_ castle, Red?"

The oversized skull bent to regard the spidery script of the invitation with empty eye sockets ; intoned, "How many castles can there be around these parts?"

Before anyone could answer that question, the torch scones bracketing the castles entrance flared into life ; the doors banged open, and Bruce Wayne done up in a crimson Victorian smoking jacket and trousers dryly answered with a thick German accent, "You'd be surprised, mein gute pest."4 (German : my good plague.)

"You have come at a time that is both most auspicious and yet somehow sinister..." His left hand within the embroidered pocket of his jacket thumbed the topmost button on a small remote ; the speakers dispersed about the fringes of the island emitted spookily sonorous wolf howls. Wayne wrinkled his makeup applied lofty grey brow in theatrical concern ; "So many more wolves than the even the previous night? I fear it is not safe to remain without, mein freunde : please!" He swung the doors wide and gestured the guests inside.

Lit by the bamboo filament5 incandescent bulbed chandelier, the castle's main hall glittered polished oak panelling, and the well oiled serpentine curve of the central staircase.

Seated on the fourth step from the bottom, dead center of the grand staircase, Picabo Radley, in tan cowboy livery, whetted a machete sized Bowie knife ; the stone grinding a metallic hiss from the shining blade. She paused her sharpening to wave the tip of the Bowie in the direction of the entering crowd.

“Who all’s this herd, Abe?” The slight lisp associated with her cybernetically assisted hearing—the cat ears were under her Stetson —softened the honky-tonk twang of her assumed Texan accent.

Aged Wayne replied Germanically : “Have you forgotten, freund Quincey, that before our...difficulties we had planned a party?”

Quincey6 Picabo's sable facial features darkened in a frown. ”Yeah, but where’s the sense in a rodeo at the Alamo?”

A door at the right side of the hall banged open, and Kara, in a severe black suit barged into the room. ”I’ll thank you not to use any quaint Americanisms for final stands regarding my intended, Quince!”

The lanky, black cowgirl shot to her feet even as she bit the blade into the wood of the stair : it, like the woman next to it, quivered only slightly before standing absolutely fast.

Quincey Liddell protested, "Mercy, Min, you know we 'Mericans shoot our mouths off without meaning nothing!"

The blonde, hair tied up in a bun as severe as her outfit, smiled with an expression meant to be to be forgiving ; it too managed to be harsh. “I know, Quince!” The smile, such as it was, smoothed our into a tight almost white lipped press. “My Carpathian...experiences have left me less sociable than my former self. My apologies!”

So focussed was she that only after chastising her friend did she notice exactly how crowded with guests was the front room of the castle. She turned to the elder Wayne and, as if to prove her former statement to her cowgirl friend, exclaimed, “Abraham, What the blazes is this?”

"The guests for the announcement of your engagement, Mina!"

Kara raised both blonde eyebrows. "You don't think that the _circumstances_ warranted canceling it?"

Amongst the assembled visitors, Commissioner Gordon in the guise of Auguste Dupin7 with his elaborately bandaged & goggled Invisible Wife, inquired gravely, "What, if I may ask, circumstances?" A number of the other guests nodded their agreement.

Mina Zor-El ran a hand through flowing blonde hair curiously marred by grey twin streaks at the temples. "My soon to be betrothed is afflicted with a damnable wasting condition!"

A murmur went through the crowd. "What can we do to help?" asked a concerned & quite pregnant looking Dr. Selena Moreau8 with her pudgy puma woman who looked a lot like Lacie Liddell.

Mina Zor-El traded a look with Quincey Radley as the old gent expounded, “This house had become too dour ; it does nobody good : what needed is,” He gestured at the people in the hall, “Is life, is flair, is talk of future!” As he talked, he worked his way towards the double doors at the left which he opened to reveal a large, inviting sitting room with a crackling fire in a large carved stone hearth. As the guests watched his silhouetted against the fire glow of the inviting inner chamber, the light at the top of the stairs faded into gloom ; a cold mist began to slither down the steps.

“You’re right of course ; just for reasons that differ from mine!”

The words ghosted from the lips of a wan Barbara as she drifted the luminous pale train of her nightdress down out of the darkness of the top stairs of the grand stairway. The silent air jet which streamed the mist that about the descending figure, gently wafted her hair into a red nimbus about her pale head ; imbued the not quite gauze of her nightdress with a spookily graceful life of its own. From behind her spectral figure twin candles illuminated the dapper dress of a gentlewoman & the dishevelled figure of a medical woman raced to the very top of the stairs.

At the far end of the stair, Kara Harker cried out, “Joanne, why are you out...”

The emerald, un-polymerized9 skinned, shabbily uniformed female Medico cautioned, “Joanne’s sleepwalking! Whatever you do don’t wake her!”

Pamela Seward's well appointed companion, Quinzel Holmwood, added , “I fear that she is not herself!”

The guests goggled as the ghostly vision glid halfway down the staircase before speaking again in her dreamy yet authoritative voice.

“Welcome to _my_ house! Enter freely."10 At hearing that, Mina Kara almost-Harker gasped in terror, and ran headlong screaming into the heath lit firelight of the newly revealed parlour. The spectral Babs drifted down the remaining fog enshrouded steps ; with a final contemptuous glare at the assembled party, Babs swooned to be caught by the two behind and the two before to be carefully but quickly carried into the room inhabited by the terrified woman.

Gordon's Auguste Dupin had the next programmed cue : "Perchance we may be of some use here! Everyone inside!" He, and his invisible wife, led the guests into the very well appointed, large parlour. The guests each found the spidery scripted card indicating which overstuffed leather armchair they were to occupy as they settled down to watch the show in progress.

At a side table, a trembling Mina was clumsily pouring herself a brandy, as, after setting the 'unconscious' Barbara down on a couch conveniently in the centre of the space, the cowgirl raced to the side of her friend ; laid a rawhide leathered glove on Kara’s shoulder, exclaimed, ”Why you're jumpier than a kangaroo mouse in a rattler’s den! It’s just Jo sleepwalking.”

Leaving Joanne Babs Harker in the care of Pamela Seward & Art Quinzel, Abraham Von Wayne approached Mina, a thoughtful expression wrinkling his prominent brow.

“What she said on the staircase, you have heard something like this before?”

The response was very capable amateur theatrics : Kara’s eyes fairly bugged from her head as she almost babbled, “She's welcoming me _but it isn't even her house! It isn't even HER HOUSE!"_ She threw her hands over her face and her two friends led her to a settee on which she collapsed.

Planted amongst the guests in the guise of Bramble Stoker, the female author of this particular vampiric variant, Helen Raiser raised her voice : "She wouldn't be a certain countess from around the _Borgo Pass_ , by chance!" She smiled roguishly as she tapped her fingers across the yellow & red cover of an ersatz first edition of the actual novel.11

That brought Mina Zorl-El out of her only slightly hammy hysterics as she fastened her gaze upon the authoress.

******************

__

1 A monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a snake is a pun on the Geistmann name as Geist is German for goat. Rampant means that it is reared up on its two back feet with its front feet pawing at the air.

2 Washington Irving by way of Walt Disney : the original story doesn't have the glorious--gorius?--pumpkin head but rather just a decapitated head. 

3 E.A. Poe's short story, _The Masque of the Red Death_

4 Wayne recognizes the outfit.

5 The tungsten filament was invented until 1904, seven years after the narrative which Wayne is basing his Hallowe'en party after. A part of that story is the use of cutting edge technologies such as wax recording cylinders, typewriters, and photography.

6 Quincey is a non gender specific name.

7 The detective of E.A. Poe's, _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_.

8 The mad vivisectionist from H.G. Wells, _The Island of Dr. Moreau_. Also Selena’s at the end of her second trimester (6 months).

9 Thanks to the pharmaceutical sector of Wayne Industries, both Pam & Harl can now mingle in polite society with the aid of the toxin inhibitor pill, _Toxout_. The old method of wearing a full body polymer sheathe was both uncomfortable, and potentially fatal if not removed within a twelve hour period of initial application. Like the sheathe, _Toxout_ also inhibits most of the pheromones associated with arousal. Fortunately Harleen's _ethylene_ production is not effected so there's enough chemistry for good old normal sex minus all of the floral fireworks : it'll be good enough to get them off without sending off the other guests.

10 Babs' sleepwalking Joanne Harker, mind controlled by Drac, gets to say the Count's--Countess, in this sex-swapped variant--famous greeting in a manner used to establish dominance in someone else's domicile. She's attempting to make it her home, her Carfax. This is the literary stuff that Babs _un_ lives for!

11 Wayne may be a sticker for details but not even he will rewrite an entire novel to better fit his party narrative. The only alteration are the three extra letters in the author's name.


End file.
